Friday, January 1, 2016

Good Night, Garden Beds

I always seem to be running a couple weeks late on posts these days!  So in the spirit of "Better Late then Never" (again) here's little bit of catch-up news.  Other than the one good snow we had in late November (semi-immortalized in my current blog header) this as been, so far, "the winter that wasn't.".  Since everything was not frozen solid as it usually is mid-December I was able to get a little garden work in.

With some help from Daughter #1, I managed to get those grass clippings I had piled up in late November moved onto the garden beds. We got all the old stuff cleaned out and the clippings on in just few hours.  (Which, of course, begs the question "Why didn't you do it sooner?"  I'm taking the 5th on that one.)   Grass clippings may not be the best choice for mulching beds but, as Daughter #1 pointed out, it can't be worse than last years "wheat straw" mulch that resulted in "Wheat-gate".  I will, of course, let everyone know how it turns out whether it's good or bad.

As always, the 'Girls' turned out to "help".

All done!

Don't let them fool you!  Just 'cause they were there at the start and finish doesn't mean they actually worked in-between!
However it works out for the garden, it was fun getting out with Daughter #1, and getting this taken care of makes it a whole lot easier to look out the window and not see something else that needs to be done.  That in itself is a blessing!

I thought I would also throw something else Daughter #1 (with some other help sometimes) do each year as something of a Christmas tradition.  Each year we sit down and do a puzzle.  It's become a wonderful excuse to just stop all the business for a bit and spending time together.  It's something we've both come to look forward to in the Christmas season and something we should be able to do for many years to come.

The bottom of the bowls came pretty quickly.  Everything else - not so much.


Col. 1:9-12,

Mark

7 comments:

  1. What a great Christmas tradition. I'm glad you guys kept that!

    As for the garden, I always use grass clippings---it's a necessity up here with my sandy soil. And again---I just adore your "helpers". How sweet!

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    1. Hi Sue! Glad to here someone else successfully uses grass clipping for mulch. And the birds just seem to like being where the 'action' is. It kind of fun to have them around, even I do have to shoo them out of way occasionally.

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  2. I love jigsaw puzzles and they are so much more fun when you have a partner!

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    1. Hi Hoosier Girl! We've been doing puzzles at Christmas for probably 10 years now. We really do enjoy the time together.

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  3. I use grass clippings almost exclusively to mulch my garden beds and field garden all season long. Although during the summer they decompose quickly and I often have to re-mulch two or even three times, I always have an ample supply of the clippings and the nutrients in them go "into" the soil where they're beneficial.

    That is one great puzzle. (It might have driven me nuts!)

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    1. Hi Mama Pea! I am glad to hear the grass clipping have a better chance of yielding good results than the wheat straw. "Even a blind hog..." as the saying goes.

      We were beginning to wonder if this one was going to beat us. It was a great puzzle, but there was a lot sitting a staring involved just to fit a single piece.

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  4. Ah yes, the old "why didn't you do it sooner?" Mark, there is no answer to that, LOL. At least there isn't one that sounds like an excuse.

    I too am interested in Mama Pea's grass clipping results. We usually put our grass clippings into the chicken coop, because I always worry about weed seed heads doing the making more weeds in the garden. I have the same problem with compost, because apparently my compost doesn't get hot enough to kill the weed seeds. My best mulch so far is leaves, of which we have a lot.

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