Well, its a been a good week in the gardens, we have had frost a couple times so plants are being taken out during the day and brought in for the evenings and or covered an things are still very slow indeed.  My fruit tree’s are ready to go but the cold is holding them, still no blooms yet, which means I am still holding my mason bee’s but they will go out this week yet.

Having said that so many things are leafing out, all the canes and fruiting bushes are going well.. the lilac’s are budding up their blooms, the honeyberries are the same. I picked up a extra male Honeyberry as I have extra females ordered and coming and so now to many females.. but more important, I want to plant two females in a totally different area of the yard and so I need that male to go with the girls.

Each morning after chores, I pick up my hoe, rake and other tools and I start removing all the grass and plants from a sections and then I dig it up with the four prong claw to loosen it all and turn it and then I load up the wagon and back fill it..

This is a double bed.. six feet wide, which you can reach from both sides.. its a far reach and I know it.. but I will deal with the issues of a wide bed raither then split it down into two very narrow beds with the walkway in the middle.. sometimes you deal with what you can and make it work. Each 3 by 6 foot area took around 6 wagon loads of the top soil. with two lots taking 9 loads as it was a much large infill needed there.

There is a load of mulch ordered and coming, so you will come off to your right onto the pathway and then can go left down the garden line or right into the other garden area. The path you can see between the infilled area and the edge of the strawberry raised bed and the old well head will be filled with mulch for the pathway.  I need to dig and transplant some of the plants from that pathway.

If you look to the left of the gravel pathway, you can see that we pulled and potted up 38 violet clumps that will be used as infill. I use them in almost all my healing salves.. so making sure I keep a good size patch of them going is very important.

Also got one section of the rock garden in the corner of the deck.. got some cute flowering shrubs and some pretty annuals, I also tucked in a couple violets and the creeping Charlie is free lol..  I might add a few more things once the weather warms up enough from the started plants in the house but its to cold to add anything else right now. On the other side, I am going to put in some hosta’s to fill up that space.. just want something easy to deal with there but give it some color and such.

Nothing up yet in the horse trough gardens or where we planted in regard to pea’s and beets so those are in but holding.. They keep saying rain but we keep getting cool (with bitter winds) with bright sunshine. I am watering things in.. but I do hope that we get some rain soon..

Its not dry at all so that’s good but I still would not mind a nice rain to top everything up and settle things down. The toads have found the front pond an they are in love each other and it.. so much singing going on.. Its just lovely and I saw my first dragonfly hunting there yesterday!

We will need to add some plants to the pond and we will be planting the banks to create a more stable holding for them.. I am amazed at how active and alive it is already..

In case you missed it on the earlier post..  I also got most of the stump garden planted out this week as well.  I will take a photo it next week for you as the plants are already up and thriving in their stump garden, which is lovely to see.