Zinnias and such - March 27, 2025

Yesterday morning, I went to work on a flower bed beside the driveway.  It was full of leaves and last year's flower stems.  Under all that debris, stuff was coming to life.   I raked it all out, scuffed up the soil, and sprinkled seeds - zinnia, cosmos, and bachelor's buttons.in that bed and in the "stump bed" down the hill.

In the stump bed, a rudbeckia that I planted last year is coming back to life, and it has made babies.  I dug up two of the babies and moved them up to the driveway border. 

The aster I planted last year in that same bed is budding.  

Fire ants have built a nest against the stump.  I guess we've run them out of Nanny's yard and into ours.

I worked on the driveway border until nearly noon.  Shredded leaves for the compost bin. Sprinkled mushroom compost on the pile and mixed it in.  It needs to be wet, but dragging the water hose that far (and rolling the blasted thing back up) took more gumption than I had.  Hopefully, we'll get the rain that's predicted for the weekend.

When The Husband came home from work, we set the t-posts in the garden for fencing - two rows for tomatoes and one for the anasazi beans I'm going to try.  Before we went to the garden, The Husband said, "I wonder if a little girl [meaning the Little Rotten Baby] would like a ride on the tractor.  We went across the road to ask her; of course she wanted to ride the tractor.  She and her next oldest sister (age 10) went to the garden with us.

Riding the tractor while it's setting t-posts is not much fun for a kid.  The Husband drives to the end of the row and backs out of it, 8-10 feet at a time.  Within 5 minutes, the LRB was sitting on her butt in the newly-tilled soil on the far side of the garden, throwing dirt in the air.

The girls came home with us for supper.  After we ate, until it got dark, I pushed the LRB in the swing, then we walked them home.  

After supper tonight, I will try to cajole The Husband into helping me put up the fence wire, and tomorrow I will plant the tomato plants I've been babying for two weeks.  If a late frost comes, we'll just have to tie shopping bags over them.