Just another Wednesday Morning in the big backyard

My garden...
You know I look at blogs like Mary's at "My New 30" and I think I'm so far behind. I've always wanted to live somewhere green, and I always envy those who do. My garden is sooo far behind some of you.

Having said that tho...I love the desert, the HIGH desert. (I cannot tolerate the Arizona heat in the summer time. Don't yell at me Arizonians, my son lives there, and I do like it, just in the winter time best )
I wonder what it takes to "love" the desert. How do we acclimate to our surroundings? How do we come to love a place? While I can appreciate other regions and I want nothing more than to visit them, and enjoy them....the high desert is home.

It has always been a source of controversy, the question: which is better the forest or the wide open spaces?

People who grow up in the desert, with wide-open spaces tend to get claustrophobic in the mountains/forests.
They've even gone so far to say that "it's pretty, but all you can see is a tree. It blocks your view".
But people from more wooded areas can find the "wide-open" spaces (especially desert spaces) very bleak and kind of melancholy.
I like both (there's nothing like being a fence walker. Very PC, that's me. )
I grew up in Washington and Oregon, so I love the mountain/forests and the lakes. But I've lived in Nevada for much longer, and I truly love the high desert.
What I don't like.... FORGIVE ME FLATLANDERS.... or it's not that I don't like it, but I haven't had the opportunity to appreciate it, are the flatlands.

Okay, enough said, this is about my big backyard!!
We are high desert, dry, arid, wide-open spaces. It' get green and lush soon enough (if I put enough water on it.)


It looks like I am still in the beginning stages by this picture, but if you look closely, you can see that I have radishes coming up. And some marigolds.
It's just that I'm still adding stuff.

We put in these barrels to take the overflow.... tomato plants and some peas (even tho I know it's too hot for the peas now) and the rest of the lettuce.

I have some mint growing haphazardly there, (I keep trying to pull it up and it keeps coming back) and some rhubarb too.

I put the chair back in place...(I had moved it to get a picture without it. And the screens behind it. I guess we need to put them back in the windows. I just like looking thru windows without screens, but now that summer is upon us again, they must go back in) that is where the handy man sits while he watches me work.
That is such a switch in our personalities.... he sitting while I'm working. Usually it's the other way around.

The week before last we were worried about freezing temps at night. The Handy Man even bought some plastic to cover our garden, just in case.
Then on Saturday it hit 92 degrees and hasn't let up since!
Crazy weather.

We did have some wind tho..... and all the little worms from the Mulberry Tree came down.


I won't take a picture of this, but we've discovered that our cat, Izzy, goes to the bathroom in the yard. Just like a dog. Just like her big brother Monroe. LOL (our basset hound).

How weird is that? She'll scratch a bit of dead grass and a leaf or two up on it, but ????

The rest of the photos are just random of our yard, to see how it "greens up" over the summer.

Another frog....

The Handy Man HATES that I put little do-dahs in the middle of the yard. It upsets his mowing technique. His "grid" if you will.

This morning I stood "outside" my Kitchen Window, and took the same pictures I've been taking from inside my kitchen. I will use these on my food blog, when I post "What's outside your kitchen Window"

Work day on Sunday

My helpers. Monroe and Izzy.
When I go out to water at 6:00 a.m. with coffee cup in hand, they follow me around the yard. One day I'll trip and kill myself, because the cat wanders in and out and between my legs. Monroe just can't see or hear very well and bumps me from behind or stops right in front of me to smell the flowers (or poop. LOL ) and I just keep going.


I said to Rich on Sunday morning.... I never get your face in these pictures. He said....he once had a boss who said, they better be WORKING, and he wanted to see nothing but "elbows and assholes"
or something like that. so this is what you see of Rich.

His shirt says it all.......


We really are greening up!

I love lilacs!

Okay...now for the square-foot garden. I bought my compost, and my potting soil. Vermiculite? I can't find it anywhere. So, I'm doing without. I did fertilize the dirt in the bottom of my square foots.... it was organic.

Just trying to be as green as I can. I wanted a compost pile off to the side, but the Handy Man doesn't really want one. So, we'll see.

SEE? Between my legs, around my feet, over, under, up....one day I'll fall.

The Handy Man also asks me, "how can you work with that camera around your neck?"

Ha!

It was "I" who planted...notice I couldn't take pictures while I was planting? I didn't get my vine plants planted yet (cucumbers, zucchini, pumpkins, summer squash). And I started a lot of things from seed: carrots, beets, radishes, beans, lettuce. The peppers and the onions, broccoli, cauliflower I bought starter plants.

In the barrel that you see there....a few strawberry plants. Peas and tomatoes to go in also.

I have just one fear. That Izzy will use this as a bathroom. hmmmm....netting to go down tomorrow.

The Iris are pretty right now.

A new frog!!

Just my yard..

Getting the fountain barrel going again. Pretty soon, we'll have the grape vine all leafed out and over the arbor, that holds the wine-barrel fountain.

Wed, summer, Thursday spring. Today WINTER

It began with a few flurries (taken by a blurry camera person)

This weekend we'll be making our "square foot" raised bed. And obviously, I didn't have to worry about getting my seeds in the ground! Because THIS is what we woke up to today.....

It's LEAP FROG you guys.....(get your minds out of the gutter)

The Garden Project

We begin.

Northern Nevada, a warm sunny day in April. Shall we plant? Not, quite yet.... it will freeze again, (It might even spit out a snow flurry or two) but it's a good day to start to make room for the garden.

Trust me.... by the end of the summer, you will be amazed at how green I can make this old dry Nevada Big Backyard.

This summer, we've decided to plant a small vegetable garden... I haven't done this in years!
We are going to move the dog house (he never uses the dog pen anyway )

The side yard where the dog pen is and what will be transformed into a garden...now looks like this:
YIKES!!


But really.....trust me.




Really Monore....it'll be okay.
(we dont' lock you up in the pen anyway!!)

And the rest of my yard

So, for the rest of the backyard..... I know some of you have seen it in it's glory days (that would be June, July, August, September, October, November, and sometimes December. After that, those Nevada winters are rough on our big backyard.

Sunday we skipped church and cleaned off the patio, moved the dog house for the garden, pulled some old weeds,

But like I said....trust me. It will be green and pretty and you'll be wanting an invite to an outdoor get-together!

and these are in no particular order.... just what we did thru-out the day on Sunday.