Catching up

It's been a busy week, and then some!

Breakup has about run it's course at home. We still have large piles of melting snow from plowing, but the main low spots are basically puddle free, and the arena is dry. No snow remains on the lawn or under the trees, thanks to very nice temperatures and sunshine the past two days, yay!! Today we may get near 60 with sun-and we haven't had any days like that since last summer-I'm loving it myself :)

I've taken the week off, and have been very busy. Still growing veggies of course, I have some flats I need to start shuffling today or tomorrow so I have room to plant more lettuces. A bunch of my squashes just bolted up, I presume to being too warm at night. They look rather weird but I know they will produce just fine. And I got a couple flats up to a neighbors' greenhouse since they have a heat source-the pansies (oh so difficult to grow from seeds) and dill are extremely happy now.

Yesterday we mucked out the greenhouse area, and got nearly all the pots, flats, and miscellaneous garden stuff off the ground and in one spot. I am abashed to say that I have a lot of "stuff", lol We put all the contents from last years' greenhouse pots on the bank below the horse runs, so we can begin building a garden spot along there at some point in the future. Next up is the garden proper, which needs some mucking too. We are thinking of knocking down the large pile of dirt, which did not grow much except a bumper crop of weeds last year. Right now I am wishing I had about five wheel barrow loads of rabbit manure, or a couple more yards of compost-we'll see what we can scrounge up before rototilling. I have no idea when we may be able to rototill, maybe towards the end of next week?

The horses are all good, Reba is still an air fern and Sully is content to hang out and watch over our efforts. I have a van load of hay in that I am working on getting offloaded too, its just lovely grass. The silly chickens are running all over the place, but are staying on the property. At night they do roost in the barn which is great, and the hens are using the laying boxes instead of the hay bales-so that was a worthwhile purchase. Two eggs a day, regular as clockwork, with the occasional third egg being presented. This is actually more than we can eat in a week, but it's wonderful to have fresh eggs for cooking just the same.

Two "big" events here-the first is that we now have another dog. I have been looking off and on for over a year, and nothing has really struck me until recently. Last month I ended up emailing a gal quite a lot and actually went to meet the dog and get a feel for him. She decided against me since I don't have a chain link fenced yard (and neither does she?) so I pretty much wrote off the dog until I got another email from her last week. And yep, I have another Great Dane, a black. He's a good natured wussie, who needs some help with manners but so far, so good. Had him into the vet yesterday for all over check up, and even though he needs a few pounds, got a clean bill of health. My cats, of course, are mortally offended, haha But they are getting over it as I teach the dog "thou shalt not chase kitties, period"

The second big news is I think we are going to bite the bullet and get a real greenhouse. There is a local guy who has been building sheds, etc for about 18 years now, and a good friend of mine had a greenhouse built a month or two ago. I called him up, showed him my spot and we talked about dimension and placement, flooring, shelves, you name it. I have settled on a 16x28, built on a deck so that I will have flooring. Today I am going to see a couple of his structures in person and then we will decide for sure. It's a huge amount of money, egads, but I know I need something besides the cold frame.

And we may just set the cold frame up over the garden itself, to boost production this summer ;)