Grow, Little Plants, Grow!

For better or worse, the garden's basically done. I finished planting seedlings tonight - the rest of the peppers, the three yellow bean plants, the sugar baby watermelons - and planted seeds for the rest of the vegetables. Green beans, Lima Beans, Zucchini, curly lettuce, Bibb lettuce (I put the lettuces in the shadier spots), regular cukes and lots of pickling cukes. I have some room left along the fence in a couple of places, I'll plant dill there, some marigolds, and some straw flowers if there's room. I've got basil to plant in among the tomatoes. That should just about do it for the garden proper. (Oh! I forgot! I need to get pumpkin seeds! I can get those in the morning.)

If it's still cool and not rainy when I get home from dropping Simon off to be neutered, I'll get the weeds pulled from the raised bed and plant some flower seeds in there. Snapdragons in the middle, some Bachelor Buttons, and I'll have to see what else I have, I've got packets and packets of flower seeds that I either picked up 10/$1 or even 25/$1 plus a bunch that were given to me. I need to finish up the planters, too, and I should be able to get those done tomorrow. I have to remember to put my morning glory seeds in a dish to soak overnight tomorrow, and Thursday I'll plant them on the outside of the pool fencing. Those, plus the plastic tarp on the inside of that fence, ought to make a pretty decent privacy screen.

It's supposed to get very warm again, starting tomorrow. At least the heavy work is done, and after I get the raised bed planted tomorrow I can do just about everything else in the shade. That includes cleaning up my poor messy, dirt-y patio, and getting the party lights hung up. I bought a very cool pink paper globe shade on clearance over the winter, and I picked up an extension cord and a couple of bulbs for it on Saturday, so I want to get that hung up. And I have two sets of string lights that have pink, burgundy, and white paper globe shades that I want to hang along the front edge of the patio roof. I put one set together and stapled it up there, but I missed with one of the staples and it punctured the wire, so I need to splice that first, and then put the second set together. And this time I'm going to make little "tags" out of strips of duct tape and I'll staple the duct tape to the wood instead of the wire itself this time.

I want to get my pool up, too. You know, by the time I get everything finished, it's going to be the 4th of July.

I was standing out on the patio one day last week when a male ruby-throated hummer flew up and hovered a couple of feet in front of me; I figured maybe he didn't know about the feeder out front so I picked up another hummingbird feeder on Saturday to replace the one that goes in the back. I ran over it in my garage this winter (it fell off a shelf) and smashed it to smithereens. The one I got to replace it has the same feeder base as the one in front, but it's got a purple tulip-shaped reservoir instead of a red trumpet-shaped one. I got it cleaned, filled, and hung out this afternoon. Both feeders were seeing action this evening. I love the little hummers!