peas

This month is my garden every single day month. It is the 4th and I am still on track. On the first, I spent most of my time in the back yard. Let me show you a bit about my day that day.  I designated this section between the main front yard and our parking lot (yes, we have an entire gravel parking lot for our house) the pea section. Sugar peas and snap peas. Delicious! 

So, this little section was not turned into garden space like the rest of the front yard.  Therefore it was still covered with grass.  So I pulled up all the grass.

peas will live here

But it was not tall enough to really see a lot of sun right now since it's still "winter" and the way the sun is currently traveling across our lot, the higher garden space doesn't lend to a lot of sun time to this lower section. So, I was in need of some extra dirt.  To raise the level of ground, to even out the space, and to help secure that wall of railroad ties.  

my wheel barrow system

We had a bit of a gopher problem this winter in our back yard (and in the park next door) and I have been trying to figure out what we were going to do to get the yard back to a usable space for the soon to be nicer weather.  Then it hit me, I needed to move these lumps of dirt out of my back yard and I also needed more dirt for the front yard... I would move the dirt! But being as that this is our first year really diving in to gardening, we do not have a wheel barrow... but we have buckets and shovels.  So I loaded up bucket after bucket and carried them to the front, dumped the out in the designated pea section and returned to fill the buckets again.  It was tough, but in the end I was able to use our push mower and get our lawn mowed for the first time since september. Very satisfying first day of this month long commitment!

freshly mowed backyard

I brought home some coffee grounds from work the next day and mixed them into the freshly laid dirt and used some railroad ties that fell out of the yard wall to give the patch some edges. Then Phil and I worked together to clear off the side walk of overgrown grass from that little section of yard space between the sidewalk and street. We are hoping to put blueberries and some companion plant in that space if it turns out the dirt is deep enough. 

after

before

That was most of the work i was able to get to on the 2nd. The 3rd wasn't a very successful day, but I did spend time working. Phil (my man) trimmed a bush that was threatening to take over our front porch while I was at work in the morning.  When I got home, I trimmed an elderberry plant in the back yard that was threatening to take over our back porch.  We stood in the gardening talking and dreaming of what it will become.  We took a drive up highway 30 to the Linton Feed and Seed store and purchased some pea twine and a few other items we needed for the garden.  Then this morning while Phil cooked us breakfast, I planted our sugar peas. I prepared the area for the snap peas, but they have to wait until the end of the month to be planted.  Just the sugar peas got to go in today.  I gave them little bamboo poles to climb up and hills to grow out of.  Watered them a bit to get the germination process started.  And now the first waiting begins.  That is always an exciting time. Waiting and watching for the first thing to sprout. I've got some herbs in pots that I am also waiting to sprout... we'll see what comes up first! I spent a few minutes working on the patch next to the peas where the sunflowers will go, but those won't go in for a while.  

sugar peas are in the ground

the pea patch