Twiggybet1's Blog

Life gets busy...
Apr 21, 2008 | 6:19 PM PST
Tags: April , Dinner Party , Spring cleaning in Yard

and April has been especially busy for us.  Both my husband and my daughter have April birthdays, and my neice just had her 3rd baby earlier this month.  This past weekend, my husband and I went to a Roaring 20's murder mystery dinner party - costumes required.  Each guest was assigned a role ahead of time. My character was married, but not to my hubby's character!  It was a lot of fun, a bunch of grown-ups playing dress-up and "let's pretend!"  I ended up taking home two prizes, one for best costume...I never thought that I would win that one.  Who knew?  The hostess does stained glass, and the prizes were beautiful stained glass hanging decorations. (There is a photo of them in my misc. album)  The food was delicious, as usual.  This was the 4th annual dinner party we were invited to, and this year was the first murder mystery party.  We really look forward to these dinner parties every year! 

But I haven't spent all my time at birthdays and dinner parties and such.  The weather has warmed nicely, and there is always much to do in the yard.  Now, I had tried my best to get all the leaves cleaned up in the fall, but we got an early snow before they all had a chance to drop.  So, lots of leaves came down with the snow, and therefore all the flower beds had to be raked. I spent a good deal of time the last couple of weeks doing spring clean up.  I have a lot of tulips, daffodils, irises and other bulbs coming up now.  The first buds of leaves are starting to show on the trees.  Within about 1 to 2 weeks, they should start to look like actual leaves.  

I spent the good part of one day emptying the compost piles.  Of the 4, I got 2 emptied and turned, and got a wheelbarrowful of compost, which I added to one of my flower beds.  Hopefully, I can tackle the other 2 this week.  I managed to get the gutters cleaned and I installed gutter guards.  I had wanted to do this in the fall, but we didn't get around to buying the gutter guards, I don't remember why.

Today I got my peas planted.  I am about 2 or 3 weeks later than I could have planted them, but at least they are in now. 

This year, I decided to try wintersowing, after reading about it in the forums and in other's blogs.  Well, I don't think that I can proclaim this experiment a success, but it sure was a learning experience!  I don't think I checked often enough for watering, I only have a very few things sprouting.  Namely, cauliflower.  I think this method might work best for me with specific things that can take the cold and require a shorter season.  Because I treated this as an experiment, I also planted indoors some things.  I planted the same things inside as out, and I planted a few extra things indoors.