hrj

 I feel like I'm scrambling to get garden-ready at this point. Too many weekends have been either rainy (not that there's anything wrong with that!) or out-of-town. But I've cleared out the remnants of last year's plants and picked up 20 cubic feet of combo steer manure and compost to amend/top off the raised beds. (It's amazing how much compression all that new garden soil gets in the first couple years.) No new beds set up this year but some re-analysis of what to plant. Tomatoes in the same three beds as last year. Cucumbers, definitely. I think I'm not going to bother with squashes or melons this year since they're so heartbreaking. Eggplant again, since they worked well last year. Onions, but first I have to set up some squirrel cages. And then I'll have room for experimenting with some new stuff. My experiments so far over the past half dozen years suggest that tomatoes, cucumbers, and various onion family items are the most consistent bang for my buck in terms of providing close to my entire supply of an item. (Ok, I cheat on the tomatoes a bit at the beginning of the season.)

And I've achieved my ambition of setting up a hammock in the big shade mulberry, though I need to adjust the fastenings a bit to get the most comfortable catenary curve. Now all I need is some sort of side table on a swing arm attached to the trunk...