Things are finally starting to thaw out a bit here and the plants are just beginning to bloom – and that means we have a whole lot of work to get accomplished. Spring may not be right around the corner just yet but we’re hoping it will soon set in. We’ve had plenty of winter already this year!
So we mapped out the important projects for the first half of the year and broke them down into what we can get accomplished over a weekend. That’s really when we have the most time for these things although I do hope to be a lot more active about pruning around the courtyard and getting some other small things done during the week when Mackenzie says she approves. Today I managed to get started pruning the roses and some of the other plants in front of the house so at least our neighbors have a slightly nicer view to look at despite there not being any color yet.
Things on the list include getting our garden ready for planting (including building tunnels for the beds), attacking the vines in our courtyard and getting things squared away in there, and building our outdoor kitchen so it’s ready for canning season and the beginning of harvest.
While it may not seem like much, we’ve got 6 weekends earmarked to finish our compost bin, repair the greenhouse, get everything weeded and trimmed, burn off the bad stuff, put down newspaper to help combat new weeds and put new soil in the beds, lay new walkways and build our tunnels so we can extend our growing season. We also will have a few other tasks in the outer ring of beds but I’m hoping to do some of that myself and then just squeeze other stuff in where we have time.
You want to see the garden again, don’t you? It’s not pretty, I’ll tell you that. Thankfully since it’s winter some of the stuff has died back again…but things still look bleak. The raspberry frame by the fence needs to be rebuilt and the raspberries condensed together. Then I have more room for my herbs back there next to the bay leaf bush. All the dead stuff piled up in that bed will be burned…
Along with a bunch of stuff from this side. We’ll be dedicating an entire weekend to weeding, pruning and trimming before we burn everything so we hope to have things well under control after all that.
The courtyard work will be in preparation for our new outdoor kitchen as well. We have a bunch of vines that are just out of control growing all over our storage buildings. Yes, you avid readers have heard about those evil things time and time again. But this year, they will suffer. No really, I mean it. All the vines over the front, roof, birdhouse, electrical cable and reaching out for the neighbor’s house must come down. They grow way too aggressively and are far too much work. So they’re gone. I’ve also requested the gutters be cleaned since we’ll be on the roof already. Oh yeah, it’s gonna be fun.
Once the vines and their support trellis are down, we have to patch the wall and repaint since the wall is sorta disintegrating behind the vines. Then we can build a new support system for the roses we’ll be keeping, the wine vines we’ll be adding and redecorate everything with junk from around the farm.
And then we’ll move on to the outdoor kitchen which will involve laying more tile, moving some of the old kitchen cabinets in and getting a new counter top and gas burners, and finally building a seating area on the left side with a corner bench. We also plan to put some sail material outside to make a large curtain to protect against rain and wind while you’re sitting in there. We’ll be moving the doorway to the middle, first, so we have better access to the room.
Again, it may not seem like a whole lot…but we’ve got weekends filled until May 30th. That is assuming we have good weather for the next while so we can work in the garden and courtyard. Otherwise, we may have to do some shuffling.
