Gardening, Gardening

Lovely. My house is full of carpenter ants. I just told Joseph that he is lucky to go to work. I have a creepy crawly feeling all over my skin. Didn't know that carpenter ants would go for the honey. How does that relate to gardening? Even though I didn't feel like it, I went outside today to get away from those gross BIG ants to dig.

I have to do this every year. I have lots of perennials and they look great, but I also have a lot of open dirt for planting seeds of annuals. By this time of year, there are tall grasses, seedlings from plants that seeded the previous year, dandelions, clover, etc. invading my precious free dirt. I have to dig through that dirt to get rid of what I don't want and prepare the ground for what I do want.

So, because of all the organizing I've been doing inside my house, the outside needs some work (last year's herb garden and vegetable garden):

Can you tell where the grass ends and the gardens begin?

And here they are again after two hours of digging. Notice that the regular garden hasn't changed one bit. Sariah wants a pumpkin patch, but I know that I don't want to keep all that ground free of weeds, so I'm not so sure. Joseph??

The birds have not yet found our feeders we put out a week ago.

I had no idea that the basil and thyme were perennials. There was plenty of dill grown from last year's seeds and also some cilantro. I found this cute little English daisy among the clover and grass:


Despite lots of insect repellent, there were plenty of mosquitoes and gnats buzzing around me AND when I was done I had to shovel at least an inch of mud off the bottom of my gardening shoes.


The promise of fruits to come later:

We're trying potted tomatoes this year as we've had a horrible time with tomato plants almost every year!