Usually I love thunderstorms....

...but not this week! Once again my planting plans were foiled by the weather, as we had numerous thunderstorms over the weekend which reduced our lovely garden plot to a muddy mess. We did get a chance to make up the rows and fertilize the garden before the storms hit, which was good. From the photos (below) you'd never know that we were about to get dumped on, but I guess that's the way it goes with thunderstorms this time of year, they sneak up on you real quick! Anyway, we made 4 rows (about 150 feet long) and the other half of the garden (which is not cut into rows) will be for the corn, which you plant in flat ground. The fertilizer we are using is triple-17, which is actually pretty heavy duty stuff (usually used for tobacco), but Shawn's grandfather swears by it and as long as you put it deep enough in the rows it shouldn't burn the plants (also, a little goes a long way!). Maybe someday I'll have enough time to do the composting thing so my garden is a little more earth-friendly, but for now this will have to do.

We also made a trip to a local greenhouse to pick up some seedling plants, hopefully they'll be OK under the carport for a few more days until it dries out. We had planned to scale back on tomatoes this year (we had 48 last year, waaaay too many), but somehow we still ended up with 42 plants when we got home...I have no idea how that could have happened, but I think it starts with a "S" and ends with a "N".... :) Anyway, we also picked up our pepper plants and this is where I may have gone a little overboard myself...4 jalapeno, 4 cayenne, 4 green bell, 4 yellow bell, 4 red bell, and 4 banana peppers....can you tell I like spicy food? I plan to can a few batches of salsa and jalapeno jelly, and I may even try pickling my own jalapenos this year. But for right now, I should probably get back to studying for my finals...

Springtime in the south

As usual, I haven't posted in months, but now that it is springtime and the semester is almost over (2 more weeks, yay!) I have been inspired to use my blog as a garden journal since that topic is something that's actually fun to write about (as opposed to school, which is just torturous and no one wants to hear me complain all the time anyway). This past weekend was supposed to be the best weekend for planting according to the farmers almanac (which was independently confirmed by Shawn's grandfather, who is a walking farmers almanac). My plans were thwarted due to the heavy rains last week, which made the ground too wet to make up the rows with the tractor (although it would have been fun to play with the tractor in the mud, but Shawn was not enthused with that idea, dang it!) So hopefully I can plant this weekend, although it's been getting down to the low 30s at night, so we'll have to keep an eye on the weather forecast. It sure seems like spring has been playing hide and seek this year, we even got a freak snow shower a few weeks back and it had been in the 70s the week before, very strange! Many of the trees are in full bloom right now (as well as the azaleas) and I thought I'd share this picture I took Sunday (it's actually the view from my kitchen window, pretty sweet huh?)