TBnJ

On Saturday morning, we went to Boggy Creek Farm. It was a complete zoo. We were only there briefly because there was such a mob. The strawberry fields were really picked over. We got there at 9:10, and the kids and Daddy-o gave up trying to find strawberries by 9:20. We had wanted to see friends while we were there, but it was just too crazy (plus it smelled like a fuel tanker had exploded somewhere in the local area...). The photo of the flowers in bloom is from Boggy Creek.

So instead of hanging out at Boggy Creek, we came home and did some gardening in our yard. One of the classes at ADS had been selling flats of flowers as a fundraiser, so we bought several for the kids to plant as they've been bugging us that they want to garden. We also spied some cherry tomato plants at Boggy Creek Farm on Saturday morning, we bought three of those that we put into the garden.

We needed to start a new garden area because the only one we have is in 95% shade and therefore not good for many Texas flowers or vegetables. We selected an area along the curb that didn't have any real grass growing in it-- just weeds. We marked out the area, and then Daddy-o scraped off the top layer of weeds and soil. J and B set to sorting rocks out and weeds out of the soil while Daddy-o worked on turning the soil left in the garden area (which is only about 3' x 4'). While that might not seem like much of a task, it is. The area we live in is lucky to have 6" of topsoil in many places. Daddy-o hit at least one huge rock. When he was trying to use the shovel as leverage to pop the rock out of the ground, he fell backwards and landed on his rear end in the street. He's got a nice sized bruise to show for it. The rock is in one of the pictures in the street next to J and B. It's rather huge. Most of the rocks aren't quite that bad, but there were a very large number of them. (And yes, when we finally get around to putting in real vegetable gardens, we're doing raised beds!)

We brought the beagles into the front yard to spend time with us while we were gardening. Blue Dog was very happy with this plan. He lay peacefully gazing over the horizons. I think he could smell our neighbors' cats, because he spent 90% of his time gazing in that direction with his back to us. Red Dog was not as thrilled with this arrangement. He spent 90% of the time barking. Loudly. He had plans of going for a walk or something. At one point I told Daddy-o that Blue Dog had a fringe benefit of being 75% deaf: He could lay next to Red Dog without being disturbed by his obnoxious persistent barking. Daddy-o pointed out that maybe this is why Blue Dog became deaf in the first place!

The finished garden is pictured at right. The bricks were used in a former garden in the backyard which we killed when we put the beagles in that section of the yard. The kids helped carry the bricks to the front yard and submerged them. That's one of the flats of flowers (red hot pokers to be specific) and the three tomato plants. We'll have to see if anything actually survives! We still need to get the two flats of begonias into our shade garden later this week, too.

Labels: around the house, dogs, in Austin