After rain, sickness, cold, heat and Opry, we finally had time this morning to start actually planting in the raised beds! I can’t believe it took this long, but in reality, it’s only two weeks from the all safe time in our region. Just seems like it took forever this time. The first week it was rain rain rain and more rain. And then the second week, I was feeling puny for 5 days and then it was really hot and we had an Opry and well, excuses, excuses!

That picture above is a fully planted bed of bush beans and sugar snap peas! Beautiful!

We got up and at ’em pretty early for us… 9 am… (hey after an Opry, that’s doing pretty good!) and dug up the bean and pea beds and loosened the dirt a bit and planted all the seeds. And then we began to sort out all our seedlings in the cold frames. We planted 10 tomatoes in the one crib bed, and then also planted all our pickle seedlings… three varieties! They filled up another bed nicely.

Oh we also planted two rows of radish tape as well. We got out our tomato cages and I find that I need a few more. Oh, we also planted four squash seedings that were getting pretty crazy! We sorted out all our pepper and remaining tomato seedlings… and straightened out the wires of the cages we have, too.

The cold frame is now empty and I plan to get a couple bags of compost and fill it up for some more plants to live in during the season. And I need to get broccoli starts because ours didn’t make it. They got tooo waterlogged and then just drown. I didn’t realize they were in standing water, they were packed so tightly in their box! I have learned some seed starting wisdom from this year and that mainly is… start in large enough peat pots and make sure EVERYTHING has drainage holes!!!

You live, you learn!

We still have a bunch of tomatoes to plant, and peppers too. And some sunflowers, corn and more onions. Another full day and we’ll be ready and done. It feels good to get it almost done. It started to rain and we were getting tuckered out, so we came in and had lunch and started working on Maggie’s homeschool plan for her next year, starting in July. We usually take a month off for summer and then start back up at a nice comfortable climb. That way when we want a day off, we can take it, as we’ll already have 60 days in before most the kids even start.

Gave the hounds a good bath as well… Gypsy is hanging in there, her skin issues are really giving her a run for her money. Poor thing looks dreadful and without her thick coat, she’s just having a rough time keeping herself warm. She loves to be covered up and babied over…

Well, that’s the report for the weekend… the band did arrive in the nick of time and we had a great show, enjoyed the folks from Carolina Road greatly and Copus Hill did an awesome job as well. I’ll have a little video and such later on. Got a gig tomorrow, and that will be fun. Plan to just take the rest of the weekend easy and enjoy it!!! Hope everyone is doing the same!!!