One perfect wood iris in the Mary garden at the back of the yard.
Sun's out again, it's warm and lovely, and my plan for a large chunk of the day is to garden. I've already been out and watered, since we didn't get an appreciable amount of rain yesterday, but what I want to do next is take a jaunt to Lowes, where I didn't go last weekend, for some more kitchen-garden bedding plants, chiefly squashes (zucchini & yellow crookneck), and herbs and more potting soil and peat moss for my containers.
Then I want to come back and plant and weed, continuing to clean up and prettify the kitchen garden. Everything else is a mess, but if the kitchen garden is up and running in good order, then I can deal with chaos elsewhere. I think I might move a few of my houseplants outside as well. We're past the last frost, and in years past they've been well able to weather anything the season might throw at them. I'd like to set my mandevilla out on the stump in the kitchen garden to start setting blooms in the sun --- it's done well indoors over the winter, but the red blooms are so good for attracting hummingbirds, and I'd like to get it going. Some other plants can move to the front porch, where they also tend to do pretty well in the filtered sun. Hard to believe it's the end of April and time to do all these things, but the lovely long summer has begun to hold out its hand to us. And what can I do, but laugh and go?
Wearing today:
*Secondhand vintage denim pinafore dress, bought April 2024 (my $7 garden-work dress, the skirted equivalent of work dungarees)
*Thrifted Chico's purple linen button shirt, bought December 2023
*Secondhand Birkenstock Mayaris, bought April 2023
This pinafore dress is a bit tight through the hips, but it's already loosening up some, as denim does, with wear. It was a cheap, cheap buy and has some fading and staining, which doesn't bother me, as I bought it to haul bags of dirt in. I'm wearing it right now straight over my Allbirds tencel-merino crop top/bralette, because nothing else really fits under it. Hopefully in time I'll be able to pop this pinafore on over a dress, but not yet. For now I just have to wear it instead of, for days when I'm grubbing in dirt or doing heavy housecleaning.
As you can maybe see, this bralette just fits like a tank, and looks like a tank, under my dress. No real sense of my underwear showing. But I am wearing a big shirt over the top to go out in public anyway. I'll probably take the shirt off to work in the garden, but walking the dog or in the garden center the shirt helps my dress not to look quite so tight or so bare, and I feel a lot more secure and confident that way.
I'll change to washable shoes for the garden work, too --- probably my good ol' Xero Colorado sandals, which I can hose off when I'm done.
Hair up again in a quick claw-clip updo. I slept late and then had to take the dog out, and now I'm going to do all this garden work, so there didn't seem much point in bathing and washing my hair until after all that.
Later today I have to sit down and knock out another essay (fortunately one I can recycle from some former writing) for the Substack next week. I don't love last-minute schedule changes, but fortunately this one isn't too onerous. But for the next few hours my plan is to be outdoors in the sunshine with my hands in the dirt.
AFTERNOON UPDATE:
Went to Lowes and spent about $80 on
*soil
*compost/manure
*6 cucumber plants
*1 "Mexican zucchini," because that was the only kind of squash, as such, that they had
*1 cherry tomato
*3 eggplant
*1 basil (because I'm impatient and want some basil NOW, not when the seeds decide to sprout)
*2 cilantro
*1 dill
*2 jalepeno peppers
*a bunch of seed packets: cosmos, Icelandic poppies, and lupines, because a lady I got talking to by the seeds said that she grows them every year in a barl, honey, you know like a beer barl.
So I came home and planted most of it. There are still seeds I need to put in the ground, but all the plants are settled.
I spread the containers out a little to give myself more room to walk between them and reach things.
I put the cucumbers in the ground in the fence corner, where the vines can climb if they need to.
I now have eggplant, the Mexican zucchini, and cantaloupe in the actual ground, in a loose semicircle around the pavers/walkway that make a loose semicircle around the stump:
There should be room for the things that are going to sprawl (i.e., cantaloupe) to sprawl. If not, well, they'll sprawl anyway.
It doesn't look especially pretty just now, particularly with the weed cloth (which I sort of regret having put down) folded back. But once things start growing and spreading, it'll look better. I'm not sure yet whether or not I want to put down more pine-straw mulch --- we have two bales in the garage, so that seems the obvious choice, being what is actually here and already paid for. It's not my favorite, and weeds grow anyway, but it might neaten things up a little.
Came in, took a bath and washed my hair, and now . . .
*Secondhand Not Perfect Linen Smock dress (S/M), bought December 2023
I love this dress so much. It's floaty and light and cool, perfect to toss on after a day of garden work. It makes a good house dress, though I could just as easily wear it out.
Now to take the dog for a quick spin, then write an (I hope) equally quick essay on Chaucer and the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. We wanted to throw that one up before April gets away from us, as it is so shortly to do.
Put on my sunglasses to garden and have not bothered to change back to my regular ones.