It's spring 2017 - April 16 report

Last year, due to a lot of traveling, although I cannot remember where I went (!), I did not plant a garden.  There were other reasons as well. For one, the dirt in the veggie garden.  Over the past twenty years, the vegetable garden dirt had deteriorated significantly. Oh, now I remember where I was....we were in New Zealand, then I visited Will and family for the last time as they were moving to Singapore, onto Atlanta for some teaching/training, then to a family reunion. Hope for a week then off to Family Gathering in C. Springs. Left from there for 3 weeks, wedding in San Diego, visiting Catherine and family having moved to Los Angeles and then meeting Beau in August.

I had planted some petunias but somehow I had not communicated clearly to a couple friends who I thought would water my petunias. Added to that, when we left, Tom had inadvertently turned off the sprinklers. We drove up mid August to burned grass and dead flowers. I actually broke into tears.  Some neighbors commented that they noticed the grass burning up. Why had no one emailed me?

Oh well, water, well, no water actually, under the bridge or as it was....in our lawn. Saved some money on the water bill but at what cost. Ugh!

So it is Easter Sunday.  But the story begins on Dec 26.  Last June our back neighbors told us they were cutting down that infernal cottonwood tree.  But they never did it.

Fast forward to Gigi and Pop in California for Christmas. I happened to glance at my phone and a FB message had come in from one of the other neighbors. "Hey, Lisa, the Dows are cutting down their  cottonwood tree. They need to use your backyard as a staging area. "No problem," I texted back.

Yahoo!  The tree was gone when we got home.

Since there would now be sun on the garden, we decided to get the BOSS compost that master gardener Laura recommended. Tom put that in March 16. The soil looks great. So it has been a month and Tom is putting in a soaker system.

Yesterday I returned from Tacoma and was back from the airport at 3pm.  We headed out to trim some branches from John and Debbie's yard that were also blocking our garden.  Tom had the chain saw. I had the rope pulling the branches to the yard. It took us 2 hours to clean it all up but glad that is done. We also trimmed the pine tree and the crab apple tree.

Now for some details:

 gladiola bulbs

near the fence.
Seeds near the house: