I had a very productive day yesterday.  I cleaned (once again) the large bed around the propane tank.  There must be a permanent answer to this.  I am thinking reduce the bed by at least half and mulch heavily with the wood chips.  I would eliminate it entirely but I can't bear to lose the iris, daylilies, peonies, rudbeckia, salvia and all those self-seeded poppies.  I need help!  Cutting back is hard to do!

I had great plans  to get out early this morning.  Then our son called....that takes priority over all else.  I hadn't talked with him in a long while.  An hour later I started breakfast....DH was finishing up when our hay man knocked on the back door.  He had fixed the chainsaw (no charge), just cleaned the carburetor and replaced with fresh gasoline and it starts on first pull.    We always get into long conversations when he comes. Some time later we went back inside to finish breakfast.  Phone rang again; It was our daughter.  We  didn't talk quite as long since we talk several times a week.  By now It was around 9 AM and I was completely out of the notion of outside work.

Ergo, I did none.

I am not sure when I squeezed in the pictures....probably before I started breakfast??? don't know.

Pictures

Not much is happening in the Humming Bird Bed but the salvia from Park Seed.



and the ageratum 'Leilani', also from Park.



This is the path between the new shrub border in the front of the house and the foundation beds.  I began this border because we know we will eventually loose the old Silver Maple trees along the road .  It needs a few more shrubs to fill in and a some more years but I am happy how it is progressing.  If  I do any flowers it will be just some easy care ones here and there.



Next I toured the backyard garden,

This is the monster hill of butternut squash....still keeping my fingers crossed about the squash bugs,



and the middle of the squash row,



This is looking west, showing the entire squash row in the middle (also sweet potatoes), the tomato row on the left and the strawberry row on the far right.



I am now getting bell peppers,  I still like the old California Wonders better.  These may be Karma.  They certainly are not the 6x4 inch peppers touted in the catalog!



Still waiting on a ripe tomato,

We are having some pretty nice weather.  The 80° is a little too hot for me, but I can work in the early mornings.  It is still too dry though.  The nights are in the delightful 50's.

I am assuming frost is past and have begun planting the warm weather plants.
Yesterday I planted 20 pepper plants and 4 Little Fingers egg plants.

I have been watering and still have a little  more to do today to get the vegetable garden soaked.
A friend mentioned that my very tall sugar snap peas may be the kind that does not fill out.  I think I will begin harvesting today.  Thank you Kris.  I will have some for lunch today and see what the verdict is.....may become chicken feed.

The strawberries have greened up nicely and the rhubarb is sending up shoots finally.  I think it will be a nice red.

The yard is needing mowing badly but the mower is back in the shop.  I think the gas tanks aren't letting out the gas and the mechanic agrees.  They didn't look busy in the shop so I hope he gets it fixed quickly.

If not, for the first time in my life, I will have the yard mowed!  Egads!!! DH made the arrangements with our farm worker who also has his own lawn service business.

I keep getting interruptions in my days that really cuts into my gardening time and makes the catching up project fall farther behind.  Two days it was a run to the sale barn with DH and then the trip to Bolivar for the mower.  At least I hit Walmart there and killed two birds with one stone.  They are now carrying flour in re closeable bags by Wheat Montana.  I bought a 5 lb bag of unbleached white flour.  I still have plenty of whole wheat and white whole wheat in the freezer.  It was $3.76 which is high but I wanted to try it.

I have learned to beat the interruptions by getting out early while DH is checking the cattle and doing at least an hour of gardening before he comes up with something that requires me.  That's how I managed to get the peppers and egg plants in yesterday.....I know when I get back from these 'errands' I will be too pooped to work outside and it will be too hot. 


Gardening

After the last tornado, an arborist told us that the large maples out by the road in front of the house were basically hollow and would eventually have to be removed.  He suggested that I start some replacement plantings now.  Well the problem with that is  the existing shade and tree roots.  So I decided to do a mid front yard shrub and small tree border for privacy when the trees have to go.....hopefully they might outlast me!  It still needs some more plantings but is coming along nicely.


It will have very few flowers and be an easy care, no  trimming kind of thing.  It is on the left side of the picture. I currently have an oak leaf hydrangea, a Limelight hydrangea, an Amur maple, a river birch, then a circular bed of daylilies and allium (just started them), a viburnum, a self seeded and replanted native redbud and at the end  my Annabel lilac.  There is a forsythia in there too that has had maybe three blooms on it.  I  don't have great success with forsythias and I don't know why. 

I have growing in the yard in various places some more I can dig up and use:  Burning Bush, mock orange, a variegated forsythia and some lilacs.

The chickens are still laying well.... a dozen a day or more.