osprey94's Blog

Well, spring is "springing" and I'm feeling the need to start keeping track of my gardening experiences on this blog again.

First of all, today, we saw our first hummingbird. By the first few days of March, I had my old feeder out. Just this past weekend, we bought a large flowering pansy in a hanging pot just to further attract the little guys to our feeder. I had just read that the males come first around the first week of March to our area to scout things out and the females come a few weeks later. Today, D was on the porch (it was a balmy day, but overcast) and came in all excited. "First hummer!" He whispered and right behind him, I could hear that wonderful whirring sound of a hummer in flight. There he was, with his little red throat glowing. He drank and drank from the feeder. I've ordered two new Aspect feeders and they arrived today - coincidentally! They are dish shaped and seem much easier to clean. They also have a lifetime guarantee!

In other exciting news, D ordered me a greenhouse for my birthday. It's a Sunglo from Costco - approximately 8' by 12'. We decided to put it right in our fenced veggie garden space. There's more than enough room for it on the right side where our strawberry patch used to be. We got rid of all our strawberries except for our Tristars and put them in containers. We dug the footprint for the greenhouse and bought the timber to create the foundation. Now, as soon as it gets here, we're ready to start building it. It's coming complete with benches, lights, misting system, thermostat, and heater.

It'll probably be too late to start some tomato plants when we finally get it built, so I guess I'll have to wait for that for next spring.

I did plant some sweet peas, snow peas and sugar snap peas along the fenceline of the veggie garden and spinach, mesclun mix, and butterleaf lettuce in one of the raised beds.

I also planted an inside herb garden with flat-leaf parsley, cilantro and basil. I want to have it in the windowsill of the kitchen eventually, but right now it's locked away in the laundry room until the little seedlings get bigger and can withstand a little gnawing by the cats.

And the countdown 'till summer break begins in earnest!