Well, yesterday I admitted I had lost the battle and made up the Earth Day free gifts from the museum. Cards. Paper business cards with museum information on one side (hours, location, web address, phone, logo) and handy dandy saving the earth tips on the other side. No one else on the staff seemed to see the irony in printing up cards to give away on Earth Day. Not only are we doing that, but we're also having a kids activity - in which they plant grass. In a plastic cup. Yeah. Gotta love it. Or, uh, not.

On the brighter side though we just finished an annual program in which our curmudgeonly friend who's a raptor education & rescue expert brings some birds to the museum and talks about them. Small turnout this year but it was awesome: a peregrine falcon, a broadwing hawk and a great horned owl. Very cool.

Oh and yeah, I'm at work. Naturally.

Earth Day? Mmmm...

Bear: I'm Sir Loves-A-Lot! The bear who loves to love.
Homer: They didn't have Lord Huggington?
Marge: It's the same basic bear, Homey.
Homer: [dejected] I guess.

Never heard of it. Apparently it's on the 22nd - is it happening today because it's the nearest weekend?

I'll do my bit tomorrow. I've snagged an allotment from the local council. It hasn't been touched since the 1987 storm so there's 21 years of overgrowth to clear. The plan is for me and Specklet to garden the hell out of the thing and grow our own stuff. It's going to be back breaking work for a few months, but it'll turn out great in the end. Tomorrow is the start and Monday will be a day of many aches, I suspect.

ED isn't until 4/22, but it is the weekend, so today spent the morning discussing our future sheep raising with our mentor (www.landlamb.com) then went to garden store for a wheelbarrow. Now I am off to kill sumac and do some weeding.

Terrapin - more things you can do with your sheepsies!

We picked up some topsoil at the local Wally World to fill the top holes in my concrete block raised bed vegetable garden (mine are two bricks high with access aisles in-between). I will plant flowers like nasturtiums, calendula, and gem marigold in these and we will eat the flowers. I also planted three catmints in the Kitty garden. Soon that garden will get some cat claw millet, lemon catnip, and a pussy willow to go with the catmint, pussytoes ground cover, and cat thyme.

Oh, yes, and I weeded the raised beds. The greens in one bed will be joined in May by cucumber vines and beans on ladders(intensive companion planting works well in raised beds), and the peas in another bed will give way to tomatoes, peppers, Thai eggplant, and basil of many kinds. The third bed will be squash, maybe a little melon -- some of that will be bush squash, some laddered vine squash, so there may not be much room for companions.

I've been landscaping my yard (it's an amateur job, but looks better each year). The daffodils are popping in my "sun garden" (daffodils followed by daylilies and black knight buddleia) and starting to come up in my moon garden (the all-white garden at the opposite corner. Natch, those daffodils are all-white). The front border, edged just last weekend, will bloom largely cottage-gardeny with coneflower and hollyhock and dianthus, with a rock garden by the front porch and an herb garden by the back porch.

I suppose I should get pics when things start really blooming.

We spent the afternoon in the garden which is in pretty bad disrepair. This is our first spring in the house and we didn't even know what flowers would come up. It turns out to be tulips and daffodils. We have seven or eight rose bushes that were totally out of control.

I volunteered all day at a farm that's a site on an annual farm tour in my area, sponsored by this fantastic sustainable agriculture nonprofit.

My garden has peas and favas blossoming, strawberries popping out, raspberries blooming, gorgeous lettuce, a few beets, some turnips, carrots, swiss chard, a red cabbage, and various herbs. Just planted tomatoes, peppers and eggplants on Friday. Now I've got to figure out what else to plant and where to put it.

Tomorrow I'll be going ON the farm tour, since I stayed in one place today. There are 35 farms and only 6 hours, so I'll need to map out a route ahead of time.

Okay, this is a late post, but I've been weeding my garden (it should be interesting this year. I planted a bunch of different plants last year, and now I've forgotten where I put them and just what they are.) Since so many plants are new, my garden won't look done for a year or so. Next weekend we'll do the major yard work - edging, mulch, etc. Nothing died this year so nothing has to be replaced.