Garden Work & Gravestones

We've been getting in a lot of gardening/yard work the past few days! We were totally oblivious to the weather and that we were working during the hottest week of the spring! But luckily, we have an official swimming hole around the corner from our house (lucky us!) and we took advantage of that on the 90º F day this week. A big part of the work involved tilling the garden. We were able to borrow a rototiller and my wonderful hubby tilled up the garden. 

I started digging up a needless flagstone path that ran from the house to the shed and made an interesting discovery! The flagstones were not flagstones at all, but gravestones, most of them with initials! (No, there is no one buried on our property, and no, the stones were not stolen from some pour souls' grave sites.) I think this is pretty sweet! We found out from our neighbor that the previous home owner brought them home. Apparently, they were only temporary markers and the cemetery didn't need them anymore. He repurposed them for a walking path, and I am re-repurposing them to pave paths around my garden! Now I have the initials facing up for all to admire the workmanship and there are a few gems in the group like one labeled "Father" and another labeled "Fred".

How we love Fred! :-)

I put Fred in a place of honor under a tree by our driveway.  He was broken in half and I couldn't use him as a flagstone as the lettering was at the top. What better way to admire him than under our tree?

      I transplanted my red onions to my newly tilled and composted garden, and planted some Mr. Stripey and roma tomato plants, sweet pepper plants, zucchini, cucumber, watermelon, basil, cilantro, and dill. I went to Southern Exposure Seed Exchange and got some hard to find Victoria Rhubarb root crowns (I have to get them in ASAP so I can have some rhubarb in a couple years), some Winter Luxury Pie pumpkin seeds, and some Pennsylvania Buttery Popcorn seeds! I'm still on the hunt for asparagus plants to get in this year. Then, a few days ago while getting my compost, we bought a Bartlett pear tree (we nicknamed him "Bartlett" for obvious reasons), he even has 3 baby pears growing!

              Ever since I tried red currants for the first time at the Logan, UT farmers market I have wanted to plant red currant bushes whenever we finally bought a house. Well, we've got the house and the property, I just needed to find some red currant plants! Well, an online search was quite frustrating. Most suppliers were British companies, because, after all it's a British plant. I did finally find one US supplier, but the availability was questionable. I went to our new town's farmer's market for the first time yesterday and you'll never guess! Out of the lonely 6 stalls, one was a man selling hard to find plants. He had some black currant bushes and I asked if he had any red. He had one, but was saving it for a lady. He told me if she didn't show up or if she didn't want it, he'd call me. So, I left and a few hours later he called and it was MINE! Woohoo! I love it when things just fall into place like that, you know? God must have known how badly I wanted that little red currant bush. We've nicknamed him "Spiffy Biffington" - a proper British name from P.G. Wodehouse, (Jeeves & Wooster, anyone?) and I'm going to get one of the many rocks around the property and paint a Union Jack on it to sit next to him. He'll be in his own little piece of England on our property. :-)

Baby red currants! Too bad that's all we'll get this year.

It's a little sad that we're naming our plants, but it's only because we don't have any animals yet! haha!
Another really sad thing - I was taking the weed eater to the weeds on the back edge of the garden. I had just finished when I saw movement. It was a big toad! Then, he slowly hopped again and I saw he was bleeding! I must have nicked him with the weed eater. The poor thing did his best to hop away. I'm not sure why he didn't try and get away before, but I must have just taken out his shelter, which for a toad was a good one. Lots of bugs made it their habitat too. *sigh* It just makes me so sad. I noticed another frog hop away when I was mowing the lawn a couple weeks ago and he had a close call too. Maybe I'll just have to start announcing to the frogs that I'm coming. I want them to stay around. We have way too many bugs! I need as many bug predators as I can get. Next up, I'm hoping to put up some bat houses and get some chickens to help out the frogs, although the chickens might like to eat the frogs too...