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Lasagna Garden Beds





Here are a few pictures to show the garden project currently underway on the west side of the back yard.











Friends, Sam and Scott are helping provide the "back"! We are trying a method called "Lasagna Gardening" - layering dirt, newspaper, alfalfa hay, chicken manure (yumm!) and soil pep, and then repeating that a few times. The two large rectangular beds will be for vegies, and the "after-thought Triangle" will be over-flow; most likely flowers. We went up to Potomac today, to our friends', Kathy and Mike Settevendemie, Blackfoot Native Plants nursery and picked up several sage plants, 2 junipers, a chokecherry bush, and a couple of wild rose bushes for the back alley garden re-do as well.
They will all be watered kindly this year (using the 2 rain barrels back there that we have filled from the hose, since there has been such insignificant rain this year!!) Laugh if you will, but we are hoping that next year and thereafter, the plants will be more water-independent. We're hoping for Rain barrel independence as well....

In other news, Stell's Cat Mittens are more than 75% finished, and I am beginning to dream of the "Frog Prince" pair for her Significant Other, Marcus. I have a feeling this is going to be the year of animal mittens for everyone..... For Marcus' mitts, I just got Knitpicks new Imagination line of sock wool - and yes, the colorway is "Frog Prince" - all the colorways are all named using fairytale themes. I (had to) also purchased a couple of other skeins that currently have no purpose except beauty: Gingerbread House and The Seven Dwarves.

In more other news, I'm afraid the "Progesterone Surge" isn't working.....or maybe it is, as I seem more "combative" than usual.The reality is that I am feeling "awake" and not sluggish or "brain dead" and just plain old confident ... that my approach is correct and yours? .... well, it's not! Poor Jon has taken to handing me the Xiou Yao Wan bottle with the suggestion that it "might be a 10-pill day"! Google it - it's a Chinese herbal combo, looks like little black balls, and it really does help calm me. No weird sensation, just that I can smile again after about 20 minutes. It's usually prescribed for PMS. I seem prone to Progesterone /Testosterone /menopausal confusion, and Xiou Yao Wan has been known to save the lives of small dogs and larger spouses.

Oh yes, the dogs discovered the chicken sh*t in the lasagna beds just before bed tonight - mmmm-mmm-good! so there were baths to be endured, and coats to shake and the kitchen to wipe down before we could retire ourselves. No problem! I had already taken a handful of Xiou Yao Wan and had an evening Gin & Tonic. :) Night-night!

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