Recently

Symposium last week.  Lots of friends.  Some fun house guests.  Parties.  Theology lectures.  Good times!

Work.  Boy, the job sure gets in the way of my to-do list.

Washing the eaves.  Seems dumb.  But, hey, during winter's roof-raking I noticed spots that could've been dirt or could've been mildew on the eaves.  After living in the parsonage, I passionately hate mildew.  Kids washed half the eaves one week and I finished the other half this week with a bleach/soap solution. 

Grass seed scattered and being watered daily in one portion of the lawn burned in last summer's drought.  (Funny.  Last year "they" kept telling us that the grass would survive just fine.  Don't water it.  It will be fine.  Don't waste water on the lawn.  This spring, the landscapers were all offering to fix lawns which obviously need fixing.  If the government propagandizes about something piddly like lawn-watering, why should we believe what "they" say about anything else?)

The lettuces are finally coming up.  So are the turnips, beets, basil, zucchini, cucumber, and cilantro.  Memo to self: forget the seed-saving.  The germination rate is awful.  Short of catastrophe, just buy the seeds new each year.

Fewer strawberry plants + fewer rows = bigger berries.  Nice.   Clusters on the grape vines look great at this early stage.  Blackberries have been pruned, but still need more whacking back.  One cherry tree looks to be nearly ready for a nice harvest.

Loads of weeding to do. Katie and Maggie have helped a lot.   I need mulch.  Tons of mulch.  The strawberry bed this year (with the between-spaces covered with a few layers of newspaper and many inches autumn leaves) has been quite easy to weed.  I want everything else covered in that much mulch.  But mulch is heavy.  We can go at it slowly, though, with free wood chips and free compost from the town's compost site.  The mulching may be a huge amount of work, but the weeding is its own frustration, especially in the front where the flowers are, where the previous owners put layers of gravel which is now under a bit of soil.  It just plain needs to be fixed!

Pretty boring, huh?  That's the way we like it!