A Day of Accomplishment

Yesterday I forced myself to accomplish things until it became a habit.

I stitched together two Crown of Thorns blocks in the morning.  Then I opened the box of roses I'd ordered from David Austin roses.  I am IMPRESSED!  They're bare root roses, but they're huge!  When I soaked the bare root fruit trees, all three fit inside our five-gallon bucket.  ONE of the David Austin roses fit in the bucket.  Good roots!

Leaving that rosebush soaking, I took the boys with me to Home Depot and got rose food, fruit tree food spikes, soil acidifier for the blueberry plants, three bags of bark mulch, two French lavender plants, and a bare root Chrysler Imperial rose.  (o/~ and a partridge in a pear tree~)  As a reward for good behavior, we did McDonald's drive-thru on the way home.

After lunch was fully consumed, I set to work on the little garden bed along the backside of our propane tank.  I pulled out all the grass and weeds I'd missed the first time around, and also dug up the two ugly unknown bushes on either side of the center mystery rosebush.  I replaced them with the two lavenders (which shouldn't get more than 18" high or wide), and then put the Ferdinand Pilchard rose and the Chrysler Imperial rose to either side of them.  The boys helped me dig the holes!

And we collected all the rocks we dug up.  Four holes' worth of rocks filled one of the gallon pots the lavenders came in.

I left the daffodils in place, as well as the azalea that's around the corner on the north end of the bed.  Then I mulched and watered in.  It took all three bags of mulch (so, six cubic feet) to finish the task.  But that bed looks downright respectable now!  All it needs is the grass around the edges strimmed, and the fence and propane tank behind it to be pressure-washed, and it'll be done done done.

I failed to get Jazzy to nap today.  I gave up after half an hour and I went with my mother to the co-op pick up, which was not in the Civic Center as usual, but rather in the playground shelter outside.  And the parking lot was closed off.  But I got my mushrooms and my rhubarb crowns without encountering another person, so that was good.

While my mother made her delicious spaghetti for dinner, I returned to work outdoors.  I set two more of the roses soaking, then cleared off the paved area off the deck, moved the two planters that had come with the house there, weeded and churned them, and planted the first dozen of the bare root strawberries I'd gotten yesterday.

After cleaning up the debris of my gardening spree, I came inside, and stitched two more blocks.  Sixteen done, two more laid out, then I'll need to cut more pieces.