Playhouses and gardens seem to rule my life these days. I wonder what I will do with my free time once all of the hard work is done? Once the playhouse is done, it’s done. But, I guess the garden will take up most of my summer (but, that’s kind of the idea…). My gardens have been subpar the past few years due to lack of time to attend to them. I hope to remedy that problem this year. No large projects are planned for this summer so that should give me plenty of time to putter around outside. And Jake does a pretty good job of keeping himself busy these days, so that should get me more time over previous years.
My grow lights were an interesting twist to this year’s gardening plan. It, of course, is a lot more work to grow your plants from seed, but I find it a lot more satisfying as well. My first batch of plants didn’t fare as well as I’d hoped, but I did manage to salvage a few plants from the bunch. I cranked up the lights for an additional two hours per day for the remaining batches and they are all doing well.
Last year, I put in a butterfly garden where my rose garden used to be. I was pleased to see how many plants survived the winter and how much bigger they are versus last year. Of course, many of the plants in a butterfly garden are closely related to the weed family, so it’s no wonder they grow so well. But, I think it looks pretty nice and the fact that it’s easy to maintain is a bonus.
I put in a new herb garden this year. I still don’t have all of the plants for that yet. I also need to put some sort of a border around it. I think I’ll use rocks. I’d like to replace a lot of the grass in the garden area with decorative rocks. Maybe someday… I doubt Brian will complain as he hates to mow the grass and mowing around all of the stuff in our back yard probably takes more time than when it was all grass back there.
That said, I need to get back to my garden!