Garden plans

It is raining again today.  I love it.  I hope we get enough to cancel the drought!  My seedling onions are doing well, as are the transplanted pepper trees.  The daffodil and Iris bulbs are large enough to flower soon.    The rose bushes have new buds and the geraniums I transplanted a few weeks ago are sprouting new growth too.  The weeds, unfortunately, also like the rain.  So, when all dries out a bit I will be outside on the ground pulling weeds again. 

I enjoy working in the yard.  Sitting in the dirt, sharing space with ants, bees, snails and those little bugs that roll into a ball when you touch them.  It is one of the things I find very Zen-like.  I know I sound like an old hippie, but I can feel energy come up from the ground and enter my body.  I can feel my basic essence  without all the programmed stories in my head.  It is lovely.

Emma likes to "help" me pull weeds.  She eats the grass near me, smiles, walks into my lap, knocks me over with slobbery kisses, gets me all covered with that special Emma stink.  Then Abbey pushes in to get her hugs - and I am on the bottom of a wiggly stinky dog pile.  I love it.  Sometimes even the cat joins in.

Many of the grasses and weeds have been kept in check by Magnet.  He loves the oat grass especially.  He does not eat tumbleweeds or the low weed that looks kind fern-like.  But he make a big difference in the height of the general greeness of the yard.  I have to be sure to keep him away from the house, where the flowers are.  He loves roses!  Sometimes, as a treat, I will let him "prune" a rose bush for me.  Usually I do this after I've had to trim his nails, or some other chore he does not like.

I've been reading my Garden book - planning my new vegetable and herb garden.  I put the onions in the front yard where the tomatoes were last year.  Crops have to be rotated in a special way because of nutrient demands on the soil.  There are so many things I'd like to grow, but I have to limit it a bit.  Often ideas cannot be matched by body strength or willpower...so I hope I take that into account enough.  The new garden will be on the south east area of the yard...in a place that receives the run-off from our neighbor's watering.  We have been changing the slope of the yard and the structural make up of the soil in the garden area to improve drainage and aesthetics.  A super fence will have to be designed to keep out rabbits and dogs, coyotes, etc.  I don't know how to keep the gophers away.  Traps, I guess - no poison near a garden.  Unfortunatly the book is not real helpful in that department.  Maybe I should plant daffodil bulbs all around the perimeter.  They hate daffodils.

It looks like the rain has let up a bit.  Think I'll go outside and enjoy the air.