Busy in the Garden

Saturday, Brett and I worked feverishly outside.  The temperature was dropping, with an Alaskan storm on its way, and I wanted to get the garden planted before it hit.

I decided to switch from vegetables to flowers, in the hopes that the ground squirrels would leave them alone.  We walked around the nursery and I loaded our cart with flats of pansies, violas, snap dragons and poppies.  I mentioned that I also needed six bags of bedding mix.  Brett shot me a look.  "We brought the Subaru, not the truck."  He went out to the parking lot, put down the back seat, and we loaded everything in.  He drove home very slowly so the 60 lb bags of soil wouldn't slide down on top of my flowers.

I pulled out the vegetables, topped off the beds with soil, and got to work.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that we also stopped and looked at bulk bark and boulders.  I want to create another bed, with hardy perennials.  So, while I worked in the garden, Brett took the truck and his dump trailer back to the landscape materials place and loaded it up.

Then, he looked at my "new" garden area.
"How big do you want it?" He asked.
"A little bigger than this bare patch and the area where the nectarine tree used to be."
"Like this?" And he drew a big circle with his shovel.  Did I say big?  Huge.
"Um, sure.  I think I'll need to get more plants than I originally planned though."
We thought about it, and then Brett outlined my new big garden bed with the boulders.
And then we realized that a planter that big, was going to require its own sprinkler line.

So, my little garden bed turned into a major project.

In the evening, we went to a fund raiser for the equine therapy center where Brett and Pistol volunteer.  The temperature was dropping and people shivered as they ate dinner.  We stayed through the first set of music and the live auction (our friend Nancy had donated a quilt and we wanted to see how much it went for).  And then we bailed.  I was watching a steady line of cars leave as I paced in the back, to keep warm.

This morning was sunny, but cold.

I lit the first fire of the season to take the chill off the house.  Rain started up mid-day and it has been cold and stormy, with claps of thunder, ever since.

I felt compelled to make an apple strudel.

I love this weather.