Garden update

How exactly did it happen that I let nearly two months pass without taking an updated shot of the garden? It would go like this: Stand at window. Frown. See something amiss-- bluejays in the lettuces, sun-scalded seedlings, frost-damaged asparagus-- and run downstairs immediately to do something about it. Now that we're past hard freezes, and many of the seedlings are out of infancy, I can relax a little. Another frost may come, and bugs and weeds surely will too, but for now we have a pretty garden we're eating out of, the raspberries have buds, the asparagus is growing into a forest, and all is well.

I've been filling in the beds around the bricked area with corrugated cardboard, food scraps, and hay, which has had the predictable though undesirable consequence of luring every black feathered being in Otsego county to the neighborhood. Patrick counted five crows the other day, coming home from work. Sigh. Once all the beds are full and covered, of course, the smorgasbord for crows will end, and I'll go back to feeling like Spring Street's golden girl, not Crazy Crow Lady.

The mess in the bottom left corner is a failed attempt at sheet mulching, whereby I attempted to smother a bishop's weed infestation with homasote and corrugated cardboard... and the damn stuff came charging right through. So, now I need to clear off the homasote and cardboard, and dig... a lot... and extirpate the noxious stuff. To the left of that messy area, out of view, is the shed roof. There's a hickory seedling nearby, and two currant bushes, and a highbush cranberry, and to the right of the "pathway", a syringa shrub. All around, once I evict the bishop's weed, I'm going to plant yarrow and mint and oregano and thistle, and everything that loves full sun and attracts beneficial insects. The "insectary." 

Things are really coming along out there.

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