Pictures likely don't do it justice
Also, I saw this heron on a house
It's been good weather for barbecues. Recently we had our first one of the year. I may have mentioned it, but two Christmases ago my mother in law got me a charcoal chimney. At first I really struggled with it, because I thought that you were supposed to only put paper in the spout. You're actually supposed to fill the gap beneath the grill and light it through the spout. I actually got pretty good at getting the coals going with an extremely minimal amount of awkwardly placed paper.
Another thing that will make barbecues easier this year is that we have lawn chairs now. We've only had one chair that I think belonged to the person who lived here before us, so it's always been a bit of a discussion whenever we're outside about whose turn it is with the chair.
Other new additions to the backyard include an oriole feeder, which my grandma sent us, and we got a three-tiered planter
I've mentioned it before, but because the soil in our backyard is so gravelly, we mostly resort to pots and planters. When we were cleaning the ones we used last year, we noticed that most of the weeds we were pulling were actually lettuce! This is hilarious because we completely failed to grow it last season. It just came a year late! Lee-Anne wanted another crack at growing it, so that's what we have on the bottom row.
In the middle we have Brussels sprouts. Wildcard pick, as we've never tried them before. They are my favourite vegetable. My oma likes to tell a story about the first time I tried one as a child and how enthusiastic I was. They are supposed to be notoriously reviled by children but I've always loved them. I enjoy bitter tasting food in general.
Apparently they grow tall but their roots are wide, not shallow. They're supposed to be planted a foot and a half apart, which the planter allows, and they only need to be as deep as the pot they come in. They might look weird, but hopefully they grow healthily.
Top row is a variety of herbs. Kind of like how we found lettuce this year without intending to, we also had mint. Difference is we've never planted mint, but apparently it grows like a weed. I don't remember all the herbs we're growing.
Even though we have more space to plant, I still got too many. To be fair, I only overshot by one pot and two tomato cages. I got four Early Girl tomatoes, which had some success last year. For a while, I didn't know you needed to "pull the suckers off" (I hate that phrase), so my tomatoes would often develop late in the season. They wouldn't properly ripen and I'd wind up eating lots of fried green tomatoes. Knowing the technique and having a specific breed that develops earlier allowed us to get a crop last year, and hopefully we do a bit better this time around with two additional plants.
We've got two trays full of peas, which is one more than we had last year. I think we planted them alongside the cucumbers, lettuce, and radishes last year. We're not trying for radishes this time. I've had one good experience with them and two bad, which kind of makes them not worth the risk.
Cucumbers are still in a tray, but they're not sharing with anything else. I think I slightly prefer zucchinis, but they didn't have them at the nursery we visited. That was the case last year, but I think we were late to start a garden then, whereas I felt we were pretty punctual this time.
I got some seeds for local wildflower. I'll need to buy an additional pot for them. Their express purpose is to encourage honey bees. It's a common error that people think they can plant any type of flower for this. It's important to grow local breeds, and supposedly what I've got should meet that criteria.
We have a special love of sunflowers. For this reason, we reserve for them the one part of the backyard where we've made the effort to dig up and replace the soil. Last year I sprinkled cayenne pepper on the soil to discourage squirrels, but they still got to them. A coworker suggested that we toss the seeds themselves in cayenne before burying. I did so, and then added some on top of the soil as well.
Last year, I had to build multiple mesh barriers and weight them down with rocks. In the end, we wound up with more flowers than I've ever managed before, so let's hope we see similar success.
