Two glorious days of Spring !!

Thursday and Friday ( today ) we were blessed with warm sunny days. The temps were in the low to mid 70's. It was wonderful. Yesterday, I did some hard labor pulling out volunteer herbs that thought the veggie beds were their homes. They had really dug their feet in and were very difficult to dig out. So, I dug with my wonderful tithing fork and pulled with my arms and whole body. I almost have two beds cleared. I want to clear two more beds so I may plant out many of my seedlings/starts this coming week when Spring is really supposed to start for a whole week. I also did some planting in the front yard as well as in the backyard. I am saving every blackberry volunteer that I find that doesn't have thorns. Most of my blackberries will be torn out when we start building the garage which will encroach on the veggie garden. Always preparing ahead in my mind.

We are going to have to get those two windows that open in the greenhouse made soon, because it is hard to keep it below 100 degrees when the sun is out. I put a shade cloth over one corner to cool it down, but it is not doing enough at this time of the year. I am going to purchase or find a very long pole ( over 10 feet ) and buy a larger shade cloth/screen which I will staple to the pole. I will set it up so that I can unroll and roll up the shade cloth around the pole as needed. It will be somewhat crude, but hope it does the trick.

I set up supports for many of my climbing roses today. I also set up netting supports for the sweet peas that I planted last year, that finally decided to grow - and wow they are growing -
they were trying to smother the roses. Now they have their own support to cling too and should be very happy and beautiful when they bloom.

Many plants are just now coming back or just beginning to bloom. I had been watching the two large buds on my peony plant for the last couple of weeks. Today I looked that way and saw nothing. My heart jumped into my stomach, but upon closer inspection I found it had fallen over. Why had it fallen over? Well, from the weight of one of the buds that had opened into full bloom and is spectacular! Here is a picture. The open flower is wider than my hand can spread. I took a picture of it because the rains are supposed to come back tonight and I was afraid that they would really damage the fine petals.

My lilac in the backyard has been blooming for almost a week and I noticed today that my banana bush is blooming because the best scent in the garden is flowing around the yard. The smells today were definitely something to write about.

With two days of sunny weather, I also noticed that several areas in the front yard were actually dry. The new wallflower that I planted looked pretty dry. So I had to water in the front yard. Next week I will want to get all those beds mulched soon. I will also want to spray with my maxi-crop/fish emulsion mixture to give everything a boost. They might need it since they are growing so fast.

Well, it is already Saturday, so goodnight.