Garden

[Lilysmom]

@DiAnne @Allegheny @JustJazzmom @gardenman @KKWA. et al, have you ever heard of Sheila’s Brush?  I think we have a date with Sheila this weekend.  LM

Sheila’s Brush is an idiom used in Newfoundland and it refers to the last big storm of the winter season, a storm that occurs around St. Patrick’s Day. The term comes from an Irish legend which says that Sheila was the saint’s wife (or sister or mother) and that the snow is a result of her sweeping away the old season.

[gardenman]

@Lilysmom 

I've never heard of that. Interesting. Locally our last big snow is typically in mid-March, but we'll get a dusting to an inch or so of snow until mid-April. It melts very quickly though. I like to say we have two seasons. Warming up season from January 22nd-July 21st and cooling down season from July 22nd to January 21st.

We're entering my favorite time of the year now. I love springtime. I've finally gotten some stability back in my leg, so I'm more comfortable moving through the garden now. Having sat out all last season I've got a ton of work ahead of me, but I'm looking forward to it. 

[JustJazzmom]

@Lilysmom  Never heard of Sheila’s brush either, but today’s expected rain by us might count.

Anxious to get outside & see what needs to be done. 

[gardenman]

Here in NJ we kind of have no real stormy season. In the spring and early/mid-summer we get rain and thunderstorms. From mid-August on those nor-easters and possible tropical systems kick in. Nor-easters stay active pretty much of the way through winter with either rain or snow. Then we're back to just rain and thunderstorms again. Heavy rain here today, but not much wind.

[Lilysmom]

@gardenman , isn’t it wonderful to have the injuries behind you?  Ease back into it says the one who broke her foot and, a year later, broke the same foot again!

I just did a walk through the back yard.  Still full of snow.  We are getting @JustJazzmom ‘s Rain tonight and tomorrow with temps on the cusp so may have snow and freezing rain as well.  The overnight temps here are still well below freezing and we have a lot of trees so the snow is slower to go.

i looked for crocus.  Not one in sight. I live I hope though!  LM

[SeaMaiden]

Looking like Spring here in Seattle.  Cherry  trees blooming....daffodils out....

[gardenman]

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@Lilysmom wrote:

@gardenman , isn’t it wonderful to have the injuries behind you?  Ease back into it says the one who broke her foot and, a year later, broke the same foot again!

I just did a walk through the back yard.  Still full of snow.  We are getting @JustJazzmom ‘s Rain tonight and tomorrow with temps on the cusp so may have snow and freezing rain as well.  The overnight temps here are still well below freezing and we have a lot of trees so the snow is slower to go.

i looked for crocus.  Not one in sight. I live I hope though!  LM

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@Lilysmom 

Sadly, it's not really behind me, but I'm more functional, just not fully functional. I've now got three to four cortices bridged (that's the outer edges of the bone) and the fracture line is a little less sharp on the last X-Ray, so they think that's now started to heal. There's still a golfball sized hole in the middle of the femur just above the knee from the smaller broken pieces that they don't think will fill in or heal. The three to four bridged cortices and the plate should keep the femur from rebreaking now however, but I'm not using it for things like digging with that big hole right above the knee. It's the best it's been since the fracture now fourteen long months ago, but when you see the X-Rays and see that hole where there should be bone, it makes things like aggressive digging a no-go for now.

Without being able to dig, my plans to add a rose garden have been put on hold. I am now rebuilding my window boxes surrounding my front porch as the ones I'd made about twenty years ago out of pressure treated plywood (that had a lifetime warranty) are rotted and falling apart. The new ones are being made of PVC  trim boards that shouldn't ever rot. The northern and southern ones are nearly done and I'll be working on the east facing ones today and next week. 

I'm making the new ones to be self-watering using a pair of 110 gallon stock tanks under them that will be fed by the gutter runoff, and a pump on a smart outlet to move the water from the tanks to the plants. I'm also installing a drip irrigation system for my hanging basket and railing planters. That'll take a bit of tweaking to get the flow right, but should I end up in the hospital again, the plants will survive without me. I was in the hospital seven days last June, six days in July, and six more days in August, so the garden suffered a lot. These precautions should allow the garden to be in much better shape should there be a repeat. 

[gardenman]

To prove spring has sprung, here are a few photos from the yard.

And a couple of shots of one quarter of the under construction window boxes.

The window boxes are designed to hold three four inch pots from front to back and many more length-wise. This is the third time I've built them. The first time was an experiment as I didn't know if I could successfully grow full-sized annuals in four inch pots all summer. (I could and it works great.) I used only pressure treated 1X6 boards then as that was the only pressure treated lumber I could find and used regular boards for the rest, but even though the regular boards were thoroughly sealed and painted, within five years the rot had taken over. I then rebuilt the boxes using pressure treated plywood that had a "lifetime" warranty. Well, it turns out the lifetime of the pressure treated plywood has come and gone as the boxes are once again rotting. This time they're being made out of PVC trim boards. I got an insanely low price on them at a local Lowes that was closing out the one brand (Azek.) For less than $100 I got all the boards I need to build everything. That matching part to the one shown is now done and ready to be added to the second quarter and the same box for the other side is currently in my living room and ready to go out. I'm just waiting now for the weather to cooperate as I have to glue the sections together outside (they won't fit through my door once assembled) and I need temps in the fifties/sixties to do that and today's just in the forties.

Once completed, the boxes should never need to be rebuilt. (Unless the glue I used fails at which point I'll just have to glue them all back together again.) I've still got to add some trim pieces and paint the fronts green then add the white lattice over that, and the boxes will be ready for spring/summer.

[Lilysmom]

@gardenman , wow that is quite an injury.  I guessing no need to tell you to be careful!  If anyone gets near my feet (especially grocery cart wheels) I give major dirty looks.  Only someone who has had an injury knows that look.

The boxes sound really wonderful.  The self watering feature is amazing.  With or without an injury, they are great additions to the yard.

As you can see from the photo below, we are still in winter mode here.  The lake ice is still there and will be for some time yet.  LM