Our Girl's Got a Home

Our tractor finally has a dry place to call home! Way to go, Mason!

When we built that second shed, more than a year ago, we had planned to create a shelter between the two sheds where we could park our beloved tractor. Finally, the girl's got a home! Even more impressive? Mason got it built in a day!!

Our tractor was kind of an impulse buy when we first moved to Flat Top. Mason wanted it. We weren't really sure what we'd use her for, but damn she was cute, so why not buy her, right?  For the first year or so, she got parked in various spots around the landscape -- our version of yard art. But when it rained -- and lemme tell ya, people, it rains about 54 inches a year here -- we had to cover her in an ugly tarp.

Then I got a free greenhouse from some neighbors. Nothing fancy, just a plastic tarp over metal hoops. But before I could load her up with plants, Mason parked Miss Tractor inside it.  Two years and several storms later, the greenhouse was in pieces and our girl was back under the tarp.

Alas, she now looks like she was born to live between our sheds.

And as you can see from the photos, while Mason's been building, I've been busy planting. Big surprise, right?

That's a Saute Sunset azalea ... AND Mason's latest work.

 

Part Time, and No Time

I added those splashy hot pink (supposedly Hershey Red) azaleas last fall.  

I'm only working part time at the garden nursery, three days plus some at-home landscape designing, but I feel like I have no time at all for MY garden. It doesn't help, of course, that the past week has been nothing but rain. Sorry, Californian friends: No drought here!

Congo azaleas: Woody and boring most of the year, but lovely in spring!

We have managed to get a few things done: a strawberry planter in the veggie garden, a dozen or so new plants, weeding and more weeding.

New on the menu at Flat Top Kitchens: Homegrown strawberries.
We're also expecting apples, nectarines and plums this year. Maybe more blueberries, too,
if I bring some home this weekend. 

We're also working to restock our firewood supply for Winter 2015-16, but we're way behind schedule. (Did I mention the rain?) So far we've focused on clearing the future site of the guest "bunkhouse," which is now officially on the schedule for 2016, with some initial work getting done this year. Like chainsawing all 70-foot trees in danger of falling on said bunkhouse.

Future home of the "bunkhouse."

 And tonight, with great melancholy, we finished the last episode of the last season of "The Wire," which has been our main source of entertainment for the past three months, thanks to our pal Karen. Now I finally know what y'all have been raving about. Now that it's over, pour my misery ...  down in the hole ...