3/22: Well, it's official, spring has sprung!! We have had the first robins of the season hopping around, along with the return of the red-winged blackbird and starling. And this morning mom reported seeing a chippie on the ledge!! Of course that meant today I set up a couple kill buckets for the chippies to catch them as they come out of hibernation. We are still supposed to hit freezing temps tonight, but for the next 10 days plus it's looking like it shouldn't be hard freezing under 32- I still think we might get one, but we shall see.
The early flowers are starting to come up, crocus, lilies, daffodils, tulips, and hyacinths. The irises are starting to blade up too.
It looks like so far the stuff I put out to repel that racoon from our doors is being effective. I set up a few containers of dryer fluff and ammonia and put them out in strategic places, and blew through a whole jar of hot pepper flake scattering it all along that travel path area. We haven't seen it come back yet, but now I'm out of hot pepper and need to get more, lol. I'll expand out the area to surround the whole house. And start some kitty litter box dumping around some of the trees too- that helps repel the raccoons and is supposed to help attract ferals, and I would like to see a couple of those around here again.
I do finally have some pics of the greenhouse we kicked butt on. These are the originals, before we did the full sheet capover.
So a little tour...
The front porch. It's already been rather nice for a few sits so far. Right now the bench from Black Dragon is serving as a bit of a table to our milkcrate stools.
The doors and walkout to the garden. Last year we did a deep smother bed over that little walk area between the garden and garage. The two big buckets are dead pulled marigolds awaiting dumping elsewhere. But it looks nice enough for the pic :)
Another angle... most of the tubs in front are currently not in use, and likely will be filled with peppers and probably some herbs and flowers. the end bed has been weeded out, but I still need to get out there with some grid mesh and do a good gravel clean out next- I'd like to plant in some root crops there this year but it's rocky enough to need some good cleaning.
A pic from the back corner. in the middle of the staked in area is the giant Beer Garden Radish I grew last year.. I really hope that the thing comes back again this year so I have a chance at some seed off of it. I didn't really get any pods from it last year :( The green fuzz behind and to the left of the radish is a healthy crop of softneck garlic sprouting up!! After losing all the hardneck, and thought it was too late on the softneck, and here we go. I'll let it go this year to get a good mother crop going, then dig the whole thing up in the fall to re-distribute elsewhere.
And last outside shot. To the far right you can just see some of last years brussels sprouts that I let overwinter in the hopes of seed for this year too. I've let kale overwinter before, but brussels sprouts is kind of a different challenge. The near end is pretty much clear.
The inside. We hadn't put anything in yet, wanted to see what the roof did and all that first. And I'm glad we did! We got in bad weather right after and it was way easier to fix it up while it was still empty. It comfortably holds one of the 12'x1' planks on the right side, and I started putting in cages on the left side.
And the doors. It was nice the way the plastic wrapped around for the walls, it left perfect overflaps to use.
Right now I have all the stuff that was overwintering in the box outside the kitchen window and a bunch of the big pots I was overwintering in the solarium moved into the bench side. And a couple flats of the little pots of spring bulbs- crocuses are already blooming :)
Since the weather is promising not to get all hardcore freezing again for at least a bit, tomorrow I will be moving in a bunch more stuff into the cage side- flats of herbs, lavender, landscaping plants, more spring bulbs, and strawberries. That will free up a huge amount of space in the solarium so I can move a bunch of stuff from the kitchen out to there.. we are quick hitting the time where seedlings and sproutlings are going to be needing more space, and it will be warm enough out in the solarium for a bunch of stuff.
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