Getting things done!

It’s been a busy and productive week for me. The master procrastinator is maybe turning over a new leaf? Probably not.

The main thing I’m proud of having accomplished is getting (almost) all the houseplants moved outside for the summer. A few (notably the Hoya vine, the newly started mango and avocado trees, my kaffir lily, and a couple other small ones) will remain in the house where the Montana winds cannot rip them apart. But just moving them outside isn’t the complete job - it’s also then getting the windows washed (both inside and out), and getting the screens rinsed and installed. Now we can enjoy leaving the windows open, allowing fresh air in without bugs also entering our domicile. (I’m not completely over that procrastination thing though. I still need to vacuum up the dried up leaves that fell from the plants near where they’d been.)

Right now, those houseplants are grouped together on the back deck (north side of the house, out of the sun), getting used to being out there. Sometime this next week they’ll get moved about, into their summer locations. Some like lots of sun, some don’t. I’ll try to find some shelter from the worst of the winds for them (an almost impossible task). But now I need to pressure wash the front deck before any plants end up there. I’ve filled fewer flower planters than in years past. It’s a nod to my greater age, but mostly I’m succumbing to a desire to not do quite so much work.

We are very much appreciating the rains we’ve had, and all the various greens in the country. It’s especially lovely after last summer. I sincerely hope we continue getting rain. I really do enjoy mowing the lawn! I’m using the grass clippings in between the rows of the garden to suppress weed growth.

The last couple new perennials also got planted this week. I hope they’ll survive and return next summer. I caved on digging up that last grass-infested flowerbed. I sprayed it with grass killer that’s supposed to not affect the perennials.

The garden is almost completely planted. My saved flower seeds (zinnias, cosmos, marigolds) are in the ground. I have an entire section of volunteer flowers coming. I’ll have to weed around them, and decide which stay and which get pulled. I’ll transplant some (moonflowers are everywhere) into rows. The last package of onion sets are in, as are some onion seeds. I replanted Swiss chard as it was pretty spotty. The carrots are really slow to appear (and hard to differentiate from the volunteer dill), as usual. I get a lot of volunteer cilantro and husk cherries (prairie gooseberries) also that I usually just weed around, letting them grow where they’d like.

I did purchase a couple cucumber and squash plants, as well as a couple herbs that need to go into the ground. Once those are planted, I’ll just be doing a lot of weeding. Part of weeding is digging out those raspberry shoots that are trying for world (garden?) domination.

We did get the electric fence working without having to restring all the wire. Turns out all my splices weren’t the problem: Dennis found a spot where the wire was in contact with one of the fence posts. Now that it’s not shorting itself out, I have to be more careful to not brush up against it. I pruned the gooseberry bushes heavily to get them far from the wires. Those bushes have wicked sharp thorns, and lots of them. They’re much more dangerous than raspberry canes.

I’m still enjoying rhubarb. I’d made a rhubarb dessert for my women’s golf league and now am required to send one down with Dennis for men’s league. He won’t eat it, but his teammates and buds are requesting some. The asparagus is also still producing a good amount of edible goodness. The first plantings of onions need thinning, so I have lots of green onions. Dennis only chomps off the white part, but I chop and use the green tops in salads and cooking. He said the last ones are really sweet, so I must have been thinning the sweet white onions. Red onions have a little more tang.