Scarecrow = best friend??

Please try not to be terrified by our very scary scarecrow. It is terrifying and scary and named Tatiyana (?) Please do not be surprised, all of the scariest scarecrows have names favored by Russian princesses.

We used Bunny's old clothes and stuffed it, I'm sorry, we stuffed Tatiyana with shopping bags. Ok, so maybe it doesn't seem that scary right now, but the birds and squirrels are sure to be terrified, right?

I realized that making the scarecrow wasn't just a cute concept and was more of a necessity when I came home one day and saw that SOMETHING had eaten an entire basil plant that I had purchased at Home Depot. So far, the rest of the seedlings have survived but I am not taking any chances once we transplant to the garden. Tatiyana will be standing guard starting Day 1.

Trips to Home Depot have also yielded some nice additions to the front yard - mini container gardens! Hopefully these will be nice and full by mid-summer.

See the full photo set here.

Luv, chris

Digital Macro is the Way to Go, Yo!

Capturing images in the garden has just taken on a whole new life with this little setting on my camera known as digital macro. Apparently Bryce has known about it all along because he used it in school for a digital animation project. He simply neglected to tell me about it. His response "I thought you knew everything" At 12 years old, it is at times difficult to discern if he is being honest or facetious...I'm gonna go with honest, this time...

Almost a week out from the day we planted the seedlings and we now have basil sprouts joining the roundup.

Well, Whadd'ya Know?

Amazing, amazing. I mean, I know this is what was supposed to happen, but we have seedlings people!

Thus far the chinese cabbage, peas, and broccoli have sprouted. Exciting stuff.

A Dream Deferred

The above picture sums up today's gardening activities.

So, maybe April 26 is jinxed. Today did not work out as planned. Apparently clearing a small to medium sized plot is much harder than it looks.

The area where the bed will be placed has compacted sand. Very difficult to move with less than motivated staff. Note to self, riesling and gardening do not mix. We will have to bring in outside help.

Once we realized that the raised bed wasn't going to happen in a day, we re-focused attention on seedlings and BBQ.

According to everything that I have read, we are way far behind in the planting schedule. Would that have stopped the first Pilgrims? No. Are we the first Pilgrims? Another no. But it is still worth a go. If nothing else, we will know for sure that April 26 is a terrible day to start seedlings.

Today we started:

PS Aster Opus

PS Nasturtium "Jewel of Africa"

PS Chinese Cabbage "Wawa Tsai"

PS Tomato "Beefy Boy Hybrid"

PS Carrot "Nantes"
PS Basil "Nufar"

PS Broccoli Packman

PS Cucumber Cool Breeze

PS Pepper Sweet Banana

PS Pea Dwarf White Sugar

BP Nasturtium Fordhook

BP Sweet Pea Sweet Dreams

Something worth remembering - the giant grub the children nicknamed "grubby", and knowing once and for all that I could never be on Survivor, because I could never eat a giant grub.

See the full photo set here

luv, chris

The Family that Grows Together

Beginning tomorrow, April 26 will no longer be known as the day:

• the Chernobyl nuclear disaster took place
• Lincoln's assassin was shot and killed
• Richard S. Fuld, former CEO of Lehman Brothers was born

Changing history forever, and hopefully onto a much happier note, April 26 will soon be known as the day we started our vegetable garden.

Taking inspiration, well, more like step-by-step instructions from Sunset Magazine, tomorrow we will build the raised beds.

This is the end goal:

This is our starting point:

Preparation of the materials began today:

See the full photo set.
Off to go find old clothes for the scarecrows...

luv,
chris