A Long Weekend's Work

The weather wasn’t perfect, but we spent a good portion of the long weekend getting our yard ready for the summer. We bought a ton of plants, including two varieties of honeysuckle (one of which produces edible berries), raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, grapes, a northern variety of kiwi, and a ton of herbs (including a curry plant) and vegetables. Here they all are set up in the basement shop when the weather was just a little too cold outside:

In the front yard, we (meaning my girlfriend), planted a variety of bushes, giving us colour even without blooming. We planted appropriate memorials for Hobbes and Oreo where they’re buried, as well:

In the back, we expanded the garden on the side, potted various things (including peppers), and my girlfriend made a rock garden under the deck.

The other major project was building an outdoor room for our downstairs cat, Beans. For anyone reading this who doesn’t know, Beans lived in our house since before we bought it, the previous owners had left him behind, and had no interest in getting him back. He’s really nice, but has yet to fully integrate with our other pets and will bolt if the dog is around. He’s also declawed (another previous-owner legacy), and so we don’t really want to leave him defenseless and scared outside. But we do want him to be able to go outside, so we put together a private enclosure that we’re going to double as a small garden/vine area. It was a first for both of us, but it doesn’t look half bad and is actually really nice, since it’s closed off but gets a lot of sun. I think I’ll probably spend a lot of time there, too.

As a parting shot, here’s Tofu with the catnip plant she didn’t eat half of. She’s going to spend a lot of the summer being stoned.

If you’re inclined, you can see more shots of the weekend’s work here. You can follow the garden as it comes along here.