The big picture

This weekend was the big weekend for gardening in Montana. Supposedly the chance of frost has now passed and everyone was busy planting everything out. Jeff and I finished planting the warm weather crops including tomatoes, squash, cukes, corn, and beans. Our brassicas, onions, beets, peas, celery, fennel, leeks, lettuce and cilantro have been in the ground for a couple of weeks and have tolerated the light frosts well.


The lawn finally started to grow and green up a bit more. I spent most of the day mowing our (almost) acre of yard and edging a bit. I'm proud of the results. The lawn was full of dandelions when we moved in and has suffered a bit from daily canine abuse. It's finally starting to fill in a bit more and we don't look like the neighborhood derelicts.


It's hard to capture with the diffuse sunlight, but we have a fairly nice view of the cabinet mountain range from our second story. Our neighborhood doesn't look too bad either. It's mostly woods and horse pasture.


More green grass... now is the time to savor it. In another month or two this will become pretty brown.


I spread grass clippings mixed with shredded leaves around the berries and the tomatoes today. Yesterday we spent the whole day helping our neighbor put in his garden. He has wonderful, rich soil of which I am envious. Every year he puts a layer of grass clippings on his garden beds and lets it break down. If it's worked for him, hopefully it will work for us.


Free of nettles and pine needles the back yard is barefoot friendly for the first time since we moved into the house 1.5 years ago.


I think our girl Zoe (the border collie mix) has noticed the difference too.