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Spring Means Getting Outdoors

Recently

The weather was warm and dry enough last week to get outside and start some yard work. So, I wanted to drop in with some pictures of my early progress. 

Our crepe Myrtle bush has progressively accumulated quite a bit of this fungus on the bark over the last few years. I thought that the fungus, along with the mowers weed eating all of its new branches at the ground level, and its roots being exposed where they weed eat so deeply and form a "bowl" in the dirt was making it difficult to get new growth.


So, I brushed off all the fungus and filled the "bowl" area with new dirt. Silly me forgot to show the new dirt in this picture.


You can see the new dirt in this picture though. I also put up a small protective fence around the bush to remind the mowers to not weed eat around my crepe Myrtle! I may try to find some trim that will hold in some rocks or other mulch to better protect it later on.


The rose bushes are already putting out new leaves! We had quite a bit of rain over the last few days, so they will probably produce roses soon. They also got some protective fencing. I'll add  new dirt to their dirt "bowls" soon.


My indoor plant also got repotted, while I was outside, from a pot that was about 1/3 the size of the pot in this picture. She is very happy in her new home. She is the only one remaining from all the Easy Plants that I had. All the others had bugs in their soil that were difficult to get rid of and/or needed additional care such as a humidifier/low draft areas. So, most of them are not as "easy" as we were led to believe. This one is thriving though. And she loves that window. I'm sure she'll need to be repotted into a larger home again next year.

I also raked up all the sunflower seed jackets that the birds left behind and have picked up the accumulation of limbs from the effects of Hurricane Helene's passing through, as well as other winter and March winds and storms.

Coming Up

Our older son bought me (5) 50 Liter bags of potting mix for the containers I plan to use as gardens this summer. I bought several small containers for flowers and 4 very large containers for a butterfly bush and vegetables. I bought some corn and carrot seeds specifically bred for container gardening. I'll be able to plant within the next couple of weeks after the last freeze.

I'll be heading to Lowes on April 8th for some tomato plants and my butterfly bush. And there is at least one, maybe two more seed packs I want to order from Burpee. 

I also got some bee/butterfly watering stations that I'll be putting out today. I have a couple of different varieties of water I want to put in those little bowls to test and see which one(s) the bees and butterflies like better. I was going to buy some bees to help pollinate my flowers and veggies, but that would be more work to make sure they stay in our yard and the squirrels and other bees don't destroy their larvae. No thank you. We already have pollinators, so I'll just try to attract them with the watering stations. I've already seen some early butterfly arrivals, and there's a bumble or carpenter bee that follows me around on the deck. I don't swat at it or shoo it, so it isn't aggressive like a hornet or wasp would be. It has actually run off some wasps already, so that makes me happy. 

Stay Informed

Follow Simply Making Life or save it to your favorites to find out if the work done to the crepe myrtle helped at all. And I'll report how my container gardening is going. This is my first year doing container gardening outside of the hanging plants I like to do every summer. I also like to provide helpful tips around the house and yard as well as share recipes of my family's favorite dishes, dive into Bible Scriptures, and more! 

Thanks for dropping by today,

Patricia

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