We have gotten a a lot of rain from these storms sweeping across the country. I can't really walk across the back lawn. The rest of the lawns are OK, but it stopped us from tackling any edging and mulching. The next early spring project on my To Do list is to remove the light blue Siberian irises from the well head...
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Not a good day for digging. But an excellent spot for Siberian Irises |
... and replace them with some dark Caesar's Brother irises from the sidewalk area we are reworking.
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This nice clump of Irises are no longer where I want them |
That project is going to have to wait, but in spring there is always another project to do. We brought in a few yards of topsoil for repairing spots in the lawn. We had it dumped up in the area where we took down all those trees and where we are gradually adding grass. Rather than spend a lot of money on topsoil and grass seed we opted for the farmer's version of lawn repair. We put down four bales of hay. There is a lot of orchard grass seed in this hay and we are quite happy to have orchard grass up here. After we get done using the pile of topsoil for other areas, whatever is left can be spread right there on the gravel and clay spot we dumped it on and covered with hay.

The first part of lawn repair will be filling in these holes. Its time again for regular maintenance pumping out of the septic tank. We uncovered the lids for the pumper and will fill the holes back in with fresh soil and plant grass seed. They are just a little too big and deep to gracefully remove the sod in any way that we could piece it back together, but we could do that too.
Another post winter project - At the entrance to the big garage, we had a paver walkway that was crumbling. We were tracking all kinds of grit and cement dust into the garage. When we began to lift them, they completely disintegrated.
Then we had to decide on the easiest way to reconfigure the three that are still in good shape. These pavers weigh 280 pounds each. We use a lifter that the neighbor built for us so we can lift three foot pavers with the tractor. There is a design quirk that makes it difficult to set pavers side by side, but without it there would be no way we could move them at all.
We decided on three in a row instead of a triangular configuration.
And then we started on the big project of the spring...
This is hard work, but we need to do it while we still can to reduce the overall amount of work that these daylilies cause over the course of each year. We got six sections dug out yesterday leaving nine more to go. Then we will use the remainder of last year's mulch pile to fill in and level off the holes we leave.
Ad now news from the seed starting. The teeny tiny Portulaca seedlings are putting out their first true leaves. Portulaca has these weird, pointy, succulent leaves. In the seedling stage, it takes a camera or a magnifying glass to see them! They are so small!
And here is the sweet potato slip situation...