Saturday, October 28, 2006

The weather is colder...

...and not much has been happening in the garden. But, now is the time to deal with removing the dying plant matter from the yard.

The hydrangea blossoms that were holding out so well are now retiring. So, I now present the last hydrangea blossom for 2006:

The grass continues to fill in, albeit not as fast as the weeds are.

I razed the last plants in the vegetable garden. Salsa, anyone?

This is probably about a fifth of the tomatillos that actually grew, counting the groundfall and those too small to bother with. And that is with absolutely no tending or watering on our part. I now understand why tomatillos are classed as an invasive weed here.

Next week, when I get back in town, the mulching will begin in earnest.

Saturday, October 07, 2006

Updates

How's the lawn doing?

Much better! The seeding/overseeding worked well for the most part. There were a few patches that didn't grow as well, but I put down a second round of seed/mulch mix on those. They actually were not as bad as this post-patch photo makes them looks, but they weren't quite even with the rest of the lawn. Plus, the rain has been more frequent lately. This photo was taken in one of the rare instances that the sprinkler is being used.

I'm amazed at the difference in the former dirt patch by the hose:

It looks much, much better now. Hopefully it will stay that way for a while, despite being a high-traffic area.

And now the front lawn has been attacked:

The weeding up front was more work than I anticipated. After removing large patches of weeds, I would end up with uneven ground with more brown than green. This required more patch then I had hoped, but at least the mulch is dyed green to make it look slightly more comforting.

The mulch itself is recycled newspaper. The problem with that is the fibers get into the air very easily with you are trying to spread it out evenly. I ended the morning with every exposed area of skin covered in light green. And I inhaled a good deal of it, so I don't want to think about what my lungs look like (although I got an idea of that, at the risk of oversharing...)

More brief updates:
-No signs of the critter whose hole I found. The hole was filled with rocks, covered with dirt, and now has grass seed sitting on it.

-That strawberry plant Chris posted about? No further signs of life. (Guess who watered it more often.)

-Total number of slugs/snails caught by the beer trap: zero. I turned the soda bottle on its side, and still nothing. Incidentally, Anne, in retrospect having it on its side seems extremely obvious, and I'm embarrassed I didn't realize that! I also tried the beer on a paper plate idea, which grew a lot of mold but caught no invertebrate animals.

Other Outdoor Adventures in Washington

A bit off topic, but today we celebrated the signing of a contract and the completion of two weeks of law school with a hike near Mt. Rainier. We has a pleasant (but knee-unfriendly) 6 mile hike to Panorama Point. Unfortunately, the weather didn't cooperate, so this was the panorama at the top:


Oh well, it is the journey, not the destination.

But we did have one unexpected sight:

Those black dots, which fortunately for us are hard to see, were bears wandering in the meadow as we hiked past them. The park rangers are right, clapping your hands works to keep them away.