Yard projects

Just a note to say: YES, Genevieve is finally home! We searched high and low for two days, and saw not a trace-- and then our up-the-street neighbor heard from another neighbor who had a chicken roosting in his backyard... up the street we marched with a container of fresh-picked earthworms, and five minutes later we had our bird. Huzzah!

On with the show, then. It has been a very busy two days, project-wise. It has been so incredibly unbelievably warm and sunny, and it is that time of year when it's near-unbearable to spend time inside. By July I'll get all jaded and start taking the greenness for granted, but right now I can't do anything but drink it in. I built a gate for my fence. That felt good. Today I marked off all the new ground to be broken inside the garden, and soon, I hope, we'll borrow the sod-cutter and make it reality. Only then can I plant, and boy, let me tell you, I am itching to plant.


I went to visit a friend in Binghamton on Tuesday, and her peas are already in the ground. I suffered a faltering of garden self-esteem. Thank goodness I already have spinach and arugula seedlings in my cold frame. At least I can beat her at the salad game, right? (Hi Kate :))

Also getting underway is a perhaps overly ambitious but anticipated shed-moving adventure. We want to take this shed, as shown:

... and relocate it to this improvised foundation closer to the garden, as shown:

(It actually looks way more official than that now, since I've dug out the grass and made everything level and trimmed the board-ends and screwed it all together.) I'm going to fill in the foundation with concrete and a motley assortment of rocks, rubble, broken bricks and clay flowerpots, and whatever else I can haul out of our weedrow in the intervening eight days.

Where the shed used to stand, out under the hickories just outside our kitchen window, we are going to build a patio. There are eight giant bluestone pavers reposing in the weeds in the back corner of our land... left there like beached whales when the town replaced all the sidewalks sometime ago... and, well, YES, as a matter of fact a reclaimed bluestone patio DOES seem like a very good idea under those hickories just outside the kitchen window. Like, one of the best ideas I've heard this century.

Oh, and please don't be impressed by any of this. My sweet salt-of-the-earth neighbor (he of the cookies, the Santa Claus, the constant lending of tools and time and guidance and porch hospitality) came over and pronounced me "pioneer woman" after I hung up the gate. Even that was over the top. I had help, see. I had assistance. I owe a good measure of the credit for the success of these endeavors to Pete. As shown.

It was really nice to watch and listen to the robins this evening, sitting on the porch with Patrick and a beer. He sighed and said, "The family's back together."

Yes indeed. Tomorrow, we reinforce the chicken yard!

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