Our First Free Day of Summer

Of course, it wasn't totally free.  We had lunch plans and a couple of errands to run.  But, we also got a bunch of little chores done and I was able to run around the yard with my camera.  The plants are loving this heat.  I got six more tomatoes in the ground today and I weeded around some of my onions.  My goal is to weed around one kind of plant a day, so I can keep ahead of things.  Today was the day to weed around the red onions.  It looks strange from the house to have a bunch of green in the garden with a little patch of brown :)  I have a lot of work to do!

Yesterday we worked on trimming bushes.  I weed wacked around our front bushes.  I also trimmed some unruly bushes in the front.  As I was trimming them by hand, I noticed a little nest!  In the nest are four little blue eggs.  I was judging from the size of the nest and the size of the eggs that I had discovered a wren nest.  Sure enough, today when I went back to take a picture of the nest, a little wren flew into the tree and watched me closely.  So, I took a picture of the mom/dad, too. 

I got some lovely tomatoes in the ground today, and was setting up the sprinkler system when I noticed how large my strawberries are getting.  They are looking great!  The project for this morning, which Alex and Kenzie helped me with, was putting newspaper down as paths.  I've been saving paper for quite some time, and I had three huge bags full.  I spent an hour the other day shredding paper to mulch around my plants.  It's supposed to be perfect mulch.  The water gets through to the roots of the plants, but the light doesn't reach the weeds to help the germinated seeds grow.  Perfect!  I watered down my paper mulch and happily went on my way to the Pizza Hut buffet.....

When we returned, to our dismay, we found the paths and mulch blowing around in the garden.  I thought that wetting it down would make things "stick" in place, but I was wrong.  I'll try again a few times.

The strawberries are looking great!  The lemon mint is very healthy (plants for sale for $1 each!) and the tomatoes are starting to take off.  It's starting off pretty good!  Just a couple of critter casualties so far, but I think things are looking great!