The weather was pretty great this week. Tons of fun garden activities.  It was a lot more fun with a borrowed old pick-up that my toddler loved. He got to be in the front (air-bag off of course), and thought it was the best thing in the world. I seeded my tomatoes and some coleus early in the week, tried to go easy on the number I was planting. Still, with 5+ varieties of tomatoes for 3 of us, I’m thinking I’ll just have too many. Good think I have lots of friends to share them with.

The community garden is coming along nicely.

My garden plot--planted.

The garden plot got a big layer of compost. I hoed the compost in a little, but mostly left it to decay in by itself. I’m thinking less tilling will do fine, if not preserve some soil structure and it is a lot less work. It’s an experemient: we’ll see how it does sans tilling. Yesterday the temperatures was in the 70’s, and I planted my cool season crops: peas, lettuce, chard, kohlrabi and radishes. Then this morning I woke up to this:

April Fool's joke, just two days late.

What?….I guess it is spring, and here it means occasional snow. I didn’t expect the sky to open up and drop a foot down though. (It seemed a lot like the comics where it falls all down in seconds. Go to bed it’s rainy, but still warm, wake up and kazzaam: snow.) Lots of branch breakage from the heavy snow as well, which is more work for me.

Other tasks I was up to this week included buying a lawnmower and a lot of other yard equipment. Small stores are nicer than big department stores. I bought a mower at a big box store, and they helped me put the box in my truck. I was left to do everything else. I bought a weedwhacker at a small, independent store. They made sure it was the right model for me (I love it), gassed it up and made sure it was working properly and that I knew how to use it.

I also hired out for a pruning job. The trees were old and in need of much love–here is some before/after pictures of the apple trees.

They aren’t done yet, but it’s enough for one year. May I say, never let your trees get this bad. Prune them when your don’t need a chainsaw, just a basic pair of loppers. I also bought a new pair of loppers and I adore them. Very ergonimc: I could slice through branches that I probably should use a saw on. I love the telescopic handles on the larger trees I was doing as well. The only bad part was how wide they needed to open in order to cut bigger branches–but it was worth the effort it saved.