Jaci Dawn

There are definite signs of the change of season around here. The birds are starting to pair up, the air is warmer, and buds are beginning to swell.

Heck, I might even have daffodils to pick next week!

The Periwinkle is already beginning to boast a few flowers, and crocuses are in full swing (all except mine, which are woeful), and the Camellia has a few pink blooms open. I noted the honeysuckle is leafing out, too.

Last week I even started some seeds: two kinds of sunflowers and one variety of heirloom tomatoes.

The sunflowers wasted no time in sprouting upward and today I noticed that the tomato plants are making a brave attempt to sprout.

I decided to start the sunflowers this way because the last two years have been a bust for me. In 2011, my sunflowers started but stunted. In 2012, not a single sunflower seed planted out-of-doors bothered to sprout. I don’t know if the chickadees ate the seeds as soon as I sowed them, or is something else came along and nipped the fragile sprouts, but I had no sunflowers last summer.

My husband never got the vegetable garden sorted out last summer and the only tomato plant we had was a volunteer that sprouted up by the compost bin. It did eventually produce some fruit, but that corner of the yard is only full sun for two months out of the summer and by September – when tomatoes need the sun the most – it is a shade garden. I thought if I had some nice tomato plants started this year, I could work them into my full-sun flower beds and maybe – just maybe – I would have some tomatoes by the season’s end.

Of course, the veggie garden may be a “go” this year, but I’m not holding my breath. We get distracted and I am certainly not going to be the one to haul out the rototiller and attempt to turn all that soil! Sure, I probably could, but my husband can be territorial. So I will leave that to him, and if he gets it done or not will be his decision. But I will incorporate veggies in and out of my flowers, just in case.

My garden desperately wanted me to go around and finish dead-heading all the flowering plants that faded after the rainy season started, so I worked on that today. I re-staked my grapevine win hopes that I will get some grapes this year. This is year number 3 and I have it pruned down to the strongest vine. Crossing my fingers on that one.

This was my first project of the day: getting the rain barrels set up. I have two. One is permanently plumbed into the drain for the rain gutters. It has an on/off switch and all I did was open the flange so the water from the rain gutters will now be diverted into the rain barrel. The second barrel is free standing.

First, I replaced the paving stones I had with regular cinder blocks, and made the ground a lot more level than it was last year. Then I removed a 4′ section of the rain gutter drain (when we had the new rain gutters installed, I made them set this pipe up for me so I could remove that 4′ section every March 1 and replace it every October 1 with little hassle).

I found a rain barrel pump that I hope to purchase before watering season begins. The biggest problem with the rain barrels is there is no water pressure! The only downside to the solar pump is that the pictured rain barrel is in a very shaded location. The other barrel is in a sunny location. But if it is portable enough, I can probably make it work here, too. That would be beyond awesome.

That was pretty much all the prep work I did, other than to peruse garden catalogs and dream of new plants.

Harvey was quite bored with the whole thing. “Walk! Walk! Food! Walk! Food!” He’s such a “Dug”.