6:45 a.m. and Gardening Cleanup Done

Sitting here posting while eating my gourmet oatmeal (1/4 cup oatmeal, 1/4 cup raisins, 1/2 cup diced apples, tbsp. each of chopped walnuts and peanuts, 3/4 cups water, 5-1/2 mins. in microwave, and usually 1/4 cup milk after it’s cooked) and relaxing after early garden cleanup.

So, first I took a trash bag and a friend’s painter bucket and pulled all of the wimpy lemongrass stalks from the ground and trashed them.

Next, I took my 6 plastic water jug “sleeves” (explained them yesterday, here), my compost bucket (explained that here), and my “digger” (best thing I found is my white slotted plastic spoon!) and went to work. I dug down into each spot a few inches, placed the sleeve, dug into the compost bucket with the slotted spoon, and plopped a generous amount into the hole. Covered it with the dirt just removed. ALWAYS cover that “quick compost” (here) with at least an inch or so of other dirt to keep critters and crawlies from not-quite-decomposed goodies. Along the way, ground crawlies will roam through the scraps and help work them through the soil. But not enough cover could lure ants - we do not want that, do we? Paranoid as I am about unwanted pests, I will watch for a few days to make sure I don’t need to send some to ant-kingdom-come.

Now, no matter what I put in them, along the line it is easy to remove the sleeves and replace with something pretty around each patch.

Lastly, I took unused compost-in-process and trashed that. When I find something for those spots, I’ll do one more round to enrich that soil. I also took any buckets and tools with the damp dirt on them to the back drive area to dry completely. It’s easier for me to tap off dry dirt than to clean out wet dirt. For me, easy is the thing!

Right now, it’s 90 already but this is only normal summer for us. When I finished at 6:45 a.m., it was already 85. It is not hot, here unless it is 90 at 5 a.m. - we’re starting slow this summer - I like that.

Rolling along...