Veggies Are In

I am really looking forward to warm weather and weekends when we forget our projects and spend days hanging out at the beach, lingering until the sun goes down.  Until then, we had a "perfect weekend," dry on Saturday for our outdoor planting, and rainy on Sunday, forcing us inside to finally finish a couple of loose ends upstairs.  Pictures of a bedroom makeover coming soon.

Our 10-day forecast consists of all rain, which isn't good for me or the veggies.  They need water, of course, but the seedlings seem to be slow going without much sun.  We do have carrots sprouting. These are too close together and need to be thinned out, I think.  They are the tiniest seeds and difficult to place with any precision.

Beets, too.  Once again, I am not an expert in seed placement.

There were two highlights for me on Saturday.  The first was planting leeks. If I wasn't covered in dirt by that time, I would have taken some pictures, because it was such an interesting process.  The leeks came in a 4-inch pot, and looked like a clump of grass. 

First, I teased them apart at the roots so I had a lot of single blades of grass, then trimmed down the roots so they were only 2 inches long.  It was a somewhat tedious, but oddly satisfying task. We dug three 8-inch deep trenches in a 36" x 36" spot, and set out the individual blades of grass about six inches apart.  Finally, we filled in the trench so there are just these random blades of grass sticking out of the earth. 

These little blades of grass are supposedly going to grow to look something like the garlic (but they'll be leeks).  Speaking of garlic, look at that stuff grow.

Those are shallots in front.  And here's the whole garden.

You can see someone has started building a rock wall around the border.  On the right, from back to front, is where we planted cherry tomatoes, brandywine tomatoes, two sweet banana peppers, an eggplant, two basil, two parsley, a dill, six cilantro, and 28 edamame plants.  Yes, 28.  We might live to regret that, but we had the room and the seeds, so we'll see how that goes.  We're waiting a couple of weeks to plant the cucumber, zucchini and butternut squash.  They'll go in the back.

The other highlight of Saturday was planting these babies (I caved).

They're sprucing up a shaded, woodland area in need of some attention.  I put them to the left because that area gets some morning sun.  Now I am on the hunt for a few more plants for the right side. 

We moved some lilacs out of that spot last fall.  I'd like to see something that blooms, maybe later in the spring or summer.  Astilbe?  I'm not sure what my options are, so I'll have to do some research.  Any suggestions?