This pile started out in my driveway but ended up in my back yard, near the area where I am putting some new raised beds:



4 cubic yards of garden mix. I moved about 3/4 of it; a friend who stopped by to dig up some hostas moved the rest.

I'm still recovering.

A friendly and pretty fearless robin who is always back near my composter, even when I'm working back there. I think it's because I throw a pitchfork of compost that's teeming with worms down on the ground for him.

From my walks last week....

Generally I'm not much of a fan of redbud trees. They up and die back (or completely) for no reason, and except for spring, they're pretty boring.

But they are lovely in spring. One of the healthiest specimens I've seen:






I love the smells of spring. I tend to walk in the early evening, and a lot of flowers seem to be more fragrant at that time.

Lilacs. It was breezy that evening so they kept moving; hence the blurry pic.



And my mom's favorite flower, lily of the valley. Friday was the second anniversary of her passing. I always used to pick a small bouquet of them for her on Mother's Day.



Feel free to post your odds and ends in this thread! As I've demonstrated, nothing is too inconsequential to post.....

Good luck with the raised beds. What are you planting?

Too bad you are not local...we are having a seedling sale this weekend!

My usual selection of cukes, tomatoes, peppers, green beans, radishes, beets.

And I'm going to try potatoes for the first time this year, but not in the raised beds. Might try a laundry basket or a circle of some kind of wire mesh.

I planted some annuals in big pots on either side of the front door--pink impatiens, yellow cascading petunias, blue salvia, and variegated trailing vinca. A week has passed and they still looked good. Fingers crossed.

The vegetable garden is coming along. We've eaten radishes, lettuce, snow peas, chives, and dill, so far. The chives and dill came back for the fourth year in a row, so those plants were a good investment! A really nice red leaf lettuce called Merlot came back from seed. Quirt likes red lettuce, so I planted it for him.

My kids bought me a huge bag o' assorted heirloom veggie seeds for my birthday, which means that I've planted some things I would not necessarily have picked out. One of them was iceberg lettuce. I've never lived anyplace cool enough to grow it. Iceberg lettuce takes a bad rap that's mostly deserved when you buy it in the grocery store, but fresh iceberg was a revelation! It only made a loose head, as it's still on the warm side here, despite planting it on February 1, but those loose heads are huge and delicious! I'll keep planting that.

I grew tomato plants from seed--Early Girl, Summer Girl, Oh Happy Day, and Bodacious--and set them out right about the time of our last frost date...and we had a late frost. Fortunately, four of them survived and the Summer Girl is already blooming.

I picked up an Ichiban eggplant and will be looking for a couple more. I also got a few more tomatoes to make up for the frozen one--Big Boy, Park's Whopper, and a couple more that I forget. I set them out with marigolds that I grew from seed, and I'll be planting nasturtiums as companion plants.

Cucumbers and squash are just now coming up. The squash borers will arrive soon and break my heart, but gardeners never give up. These are supposed to be resistant varieties.

I had good luck with bitter melon last year, so planted it again. It's not quite time yet for okra and field peas, but soon!

I'm very impressed with your pile of compost, wtg, and your friendly robin made me smile.

I'm a new composter. For those of you who make your own, do you get a lot of volunteer plants? I've had a batch brewing for a couple of years. It looked like dirt, so I figured it was ready.

So. Many. Tomato. Seedlings.

It breaks my heart to pull them out, but I don't need them all. I left a few to grow in some odd corners here and there.

I'm doing raised and elevated beds because my knees aren't quite what they used to be.

The pile was actually purchased and got delivered/dumped in my driveway. It's a "garden mix" of screened pulverized top soil, mushroom compost, leaf compost, and sand. Some of it will go in the raised bed that will be sitting on the ground.

I also purchased a couple of elevated garden beds that aren't quite as sturdy as the one that sits on the ground, so I'll be using some of the garden mix to make Mel's Mix, which is lighter.

As for my homemade compost....it's mostly leaves and grass clippings (I mow my own lawn and don't use any fertilizer or chemicals), plus veggie peelings, etc. from the kitchen. I don't get many tomato seedlings because I really don't have many tomatoes to toss in there, but I get a ton of melons growing in there from the seeds I scoop out from cantaloupe. I don't have the space to grow melons, so I just let them go for a while in the composter and then just turn them right in, add some leaves from the leftover pile from last fall, and it gets things cooking again.

By the way, your "odds and ends" don't have to be garden-related....

Non-garden-related odds and ends? Um...we lead a very quiet life. And we both work a lot.

We did take our first ballroom dance lesson since before pandemic, though. That was fun.

I'm playing piano again. (That's kind of a bold statement, as it's recent, but I've played maybe five times in the past week.) I found a Chopin nocturne I wanted to learn, and that's gotten me back to the bench more than anything else has in a long time.

Because I'm still nattering about the garden, I'll say that I let compost cantaloupes grow in my compost last year and they made some pretty melons. Unfortunately, they had a topnote of soap, so I composted them and will thus probably get more this year. There's something else growing out there that's either melons, cucumbers, or squash, but it's too soon to tell.

I hear that compost tomatoes taste good, so I'm letting a few of those grow.

We're in a drought here, though we did get about an inch of badly needed rain last weekend; we're still well below normal rainfall levels.

Everything's planted and it's just watering, and hopefully picking, from here on in. Well, there's also a lot of weeding, pruning, and other maintenance but that's no fun to talk about.

Should have moved it out of the sun for the pic. My 'Chicago Hardy' fig tree. In theory it might make it through the winter, but I decided to go the container route and bring it in when it gets cold. No sign of figs yet. I don't know if it's likely to bear fruit the first year:



I ended up with three of these elevated beds. I bought two through Costco, and one had a lot of damaged pieces. The vendor sent me a whole new planter and let me keep the funky one.

I decided to make it a little herb garden, with a couple of patio tomato plants for good measure. At the end of the season, I might bring it down in the basement under my grow lights and see if I can keep the herbs going during the winter.






Picked this up at Home Depot. It has tons of little tomatoes already.



Currants will be ripe in another week or two:



Planted beets and carrots in one tall box, and peppers in the other. Tomatoes and cukes in the lower one:







The Mammoth Jalapenos always do well. Getting started:



The memorial sprinkling can collection. From left to right: my dad's sprinkling can that I grew up with, the one my Mom had at her condo, and a nice Haws that belonged to my neighbor who sold her house last year.

There are branches sticking out of them just in case a chippy goes in for a drink. A few years ago I was saddened to find a dead one in a sprinkling can full of water and I didn't want to repeat the experience.

Those are amaryllis sitting on the table above the cans, spending the summer outside. And my rain barrels (just refilled from last weekend's rain!) on the left.



The little raspberry patch with my heirloom raspberries. Originally planted by my great-uncle in the 40s, then my grandparents in the 50s to the 70s, my dad in the 70s and 80s, and in my garden from the 80s until now. At one point I decided to dig them all up because this area gets not a lot of sun, but they all came back from root bits that I missed.

Looks like a bumper crop this year, still a few weeks off. But there are signs of berries to come....





Oh, and the friendly robin and mate have built a nest in the silver maple in my backyard.

And I never got around to planting potatoes. Seed potatoes were all sold out by the time I got around to shopping for them. Could probably buy some organic ones and try to plant them, but I think I'll just wait till next year.

Great photos!!

WTG, those raised beds make everything look very pretty!! Also, all your descriptions are making me hungry!

MA, are you still playing piano??

I don't know if I have anything to contribute right now, but I'll keep this thread in mind!

It's all just beautiful!

Thanks, SK and Steve. A real farmer would laugh him/herself silly, but I enjoy my puttering in the garden.

Don't have a pic, but I do have a toad back in the garden somewhere. Saw him a couple of weeks ago.

Terrible pic; the bird was in the sun and is washed out.....but.....my friendly robins had a little one, it has grown, and it is starting to get its wings under him/her...



We are pleased that our yard is safe haven for the birdies...