Surprise!!!

I went to Maui for spring break and when I returned there was a fence built around my garden! I love my father-in-law and husband! Also, I heard strange voices in the back yard the morning after I returned and realized they had convinced my neighbor to not only remove one of his old ugly trailers from his yard, but they also came to our yard and hauled away our junk pile!!! YES!

Adding the side panels that Pat turned into a wave design later.

Patrick's adding a few more nails around the latch.

Can you believe Pat designed and built the entire trellis? He's an amazing carpenter!

It's such a fun and unique design. The idea is to get some sort of vine (maybe Wisteria?) to grow up and around the peak. As much as I love beautiful flowering vines, it would be tough to cover up such craftsmanship.

Patrick started remodeling the barn and we added an electric garage door, but until the neighbor came over this weekend we had the old barn sliding doors and a bunch of other crap piled up by the fence.

The dirt area behind the wood pile was where we had wood from the llama feeding stalls, LARGE sliding barn doors, and miscellaneous other junk. Patrick put a big dent in the wood pile this weekend too. He chopped it up for firewood for his parents (we don't have a fire place, but HVAC beats a fire place any day!)

These are the tunnels made by the mole I saw when the neighbor was removing the wood pile. BIG MIKE, the neighbor crushed the little rodent to death. Sad I know, but what do I really want... tunnel boring mammals or fresh vegetables and beautiful flowers?!?! It's crazy because up until this weekend, I had only seen signs that moles and gophers inhabited our property. But then on Saturday morning I saw the little mole and then later that evening I saw a large gopher pop it's head up out of one of it's holes in my garden area! And then we saw several more pop-up appearances Sunday, but we were never quick enough to "do anything about it!!" 

The men were hard at work on the fence, so I decided to take on another project. This is definitely the year of gardening experiments! We have an area along our front fence that is visible from the street, but won't grow lawn. I had 6 small gopher baskets left and thought I would use them to plant some day lilies and iris bulbs.

The supplies!

The blank area between the lawn and fence. It lines our neighbors driveway.

The result. I did 6 of these little baskets along the fence line. Each basket has one day lily bulb, potentially one large plant iris bulb, and about 6-9 smaller iris bulbs. I seriously think I over planted these small baskets, but should I risk putting them in the ground with the aggressive gophers? Spend more money on gopher baskets? Nahh, I took the plunge and planted them all!!!

This weekend was warm and nice and really made me think it was spring. I almost planted more Dahlia bulbs and considered transplanting the seedlings to the garden beds. It's Monday evening now and it's dark, wet, cold, and gloomy. I'm glad I didn't put my vulnerable seedlings out in this harsh weather. Things are safer underground and protected by wire!

The hot weather reminded me to water! I bought a long hose and this fun sprinkler in attempt to keep some of the grass green through the hotter months to come.

We found this dead snake (we think it's a king snake?) over by our garbage cans. We're not sure what got to it, but I'm thinking maybe a hawk. However, I did go peek to see it again today and it's gone.... and that's nature for you! Yikes!!!

(Now every twig I see looks like a snake! But at least these are the good kind that eat gophers and small mammals like that. Too bad he bit the dust before getting rid of a rodent or two!)

It's the green tulip I posted a post or two ago. The red has taken over, but it's still kinda weird looking.