Yard Stuff

We’ve been working in the yard a little bit lately.  The garden here at home is now gone…everything that had been out there had pretty much burned up, so I did a little clean-up.  The garden area is now a sea of black plastic; from the look of some of our tomato plants we began to suspect a disease, so we are sterilizing the soil by letting it bake under the plastic for a few weeks.  We will spend this fall and winter adding compost and amendments in an effort to rebuild the soil, and hopefully it will be better than before.

Despite our piddly results here at home, Robert is still active in the community garden he helped establish over in the city in which he works.  He will be having a fall garden there and has started some plants here at home for that little plot of earth.  Here are his plants:

Yes, you are seeing things correctly.  Those corn plants on the far left were planted in toilet paper rolls.  I had read about this awhile back and we’ve always wanted to try it.  The neat thing is that when it is time to transplant there is no need to disturb the tender young plant.  You simply place the whole roll into the ground where it will gradually break down (plus the plants can send roots shooting out of the open bottom of the roll).  So far we are kind of liking this idea…Updates to come…

I still have all kinds of critters here in the yard.  I removed a pot that was sitting on top of two flagstones to find this little guy:

Needless to say, I promptly replaced the pot so as to not disrupt the integrity of his hiding spot and to protect him from our hound dogs.

Then there is this guy:

I have seen him all over the garden all summer long.  With his fantastic camouflage he has managed to elude the dogs and Opal Chicken, quite a feat .

As part of our clean-up efforts we relocated the big compost bin, which meant dumping all of the compost out on the ground for awhile.  Opal was one happy chicken, let me tell you.  I’ve never seen a girl have as much fun playing in a compost pile!

Our latest round of compost has reached the stage that we finally have consolidated all three bins into one, large, full bin:

We are so happy that it is finally under 100° (for the most part), and we got some much needed rain this weekend.  Opal Chicken is finally able to sleep in her own little coop, leaving me free to reclaim the craft room.  Even though this year’s garden is over, there is always something to do outside, and Opal and Nestlé both love when we spend a lot of time outside because it means more time for them to “free range” in the yard.

Everyone wins!