Today’s Planned Activities

Isn’t that the way cruise ships and resorts talk about the day’s events? 🙂 Perhaps I should view retirement as one long cruise. *laughing* As If.

I’m still transitioning from career-life to retirement-life. Still don’t miss the job at all. 🙂 Isn’t that wonderful? I really don’t think about the work or the people. And that IS a relief because despite my long, 3-month transitioning while employed, I was concerned that I’d miss it. Nope. Cross that one off the list.

Yesterday was about getting new eye glasses and meeting with my financial advisor. I find it both interesting and comforting that the projected monthly cash flow we drew up in January is still fairly accurate here in May. Even with the unexpected expenses (car deductible for having the car hit at the concert, having to pay 4 months of CMS medicare payments to start, and other expenses like that) we’ve managed to modify our extravagant, thoughtless ways and stay on course. 🙂 Kudos to us!!!! I’m still not 100% sure that “this” is all going to “work out” but at least my inner 6-year old has stopped screaming daily. As a matter of fact, I treated myself to a gardening present.

Last year I had to devise a see-through fence to keep my flowers safe from the deer. We have rabbits, ground hogs, skunks and possums as well, all of whom seem to think that my garden is the local buffet. To be fair, not just my garden but I only worry about mine. I had a very healthy pot of echinacea that wintered over wonderfully. I moved it to the side of the house in a sunny spot. Yesterday I noticed something had bitten the tops off of everything there. 😦 One of today’s activities will be to toss some netting over that pot.

I’d like to grow more vegetables and/or herbs without having to worry about spraying hot pepper or chili over them. The afternoon sun is on the driveway side of the house, which means I have nowhere to plant there. So I treated myself to a 2nd raised bed (2nd because a few years ago my brother-in-law built me one out of some leftover wood he had). I couldn’t resist Home Depot when I saw this raised bed. It was almost everything I wanted (it doesn’t have wheels) including a trellis back AND it was 20% off. That trellis back means I can attach netting or screening to it and drape it over the plants to protect them from the Hungries.

Unfortunately the garden bed does NOT come assembled. 😦 That is something I will have to do (unless by some miracle the person who is SUPPOSED to be replacing boards on the deck actually shows up this week). The box came yesterday. Today’s adventures will include unpacking it and seeing if it’s easy to assemble (pre-drilled holes and such) or if I’m going to need “Someone with Tools”. In either case I’m actually very excited to have this for this year. 🙂

Other chores involve cutting down my poor willow bush. 😦 I don’t know what happened to it. It was fine last year. But this spring it’s dead. No question about it – I gave it a few weeks to see if it was merely ill or slow but no, it’s definitely not coming back. I don’t know what happened to it. We had such a mild winter. That might be the answer – maybe cold winters kill off whatever killed off my willow. I also lost a small Japanese maple tree in my back yard. That was a cutting from my tree in the front of the house, before it starting failing and we pulled it. Taking that down is much less pressing as it’s not as large and it’s in an out-of-the-way spot.

The plants I’m growing from seed are doing very well for the most part. You can see that there are a few empty containers. I wanted to move them outdoors last weekend, let them get used to real life and light. This past weekend was 3 days of rain and this week the temperature is 10 degrees below normal (in the 50s, not the 60s) so I’ve not moved them yet. I’m not 100% sure those containers would drain properly in heavy rain.

My rudebeckia laciniata hortensia is coming back, as is the anise hyssop. I don’t know why the rudbeckia does not spread more. I’ve dug up and pulled out everything that is not that, trying to leave it room to spread. RLH just wants to head towards the sidewalk. I also seem to be inundated with lots of white snake root, which is a weed I don’t want (you can see at least 2 of them in the photo below). I seem to only have 2 anise hyssops coming back and I’m fairly certain I had 3 originally (pushed up against the barrier at the bottom of the photo – again – why do they grow THAT direction???). I ordered 2 more this year from my favorite online garden shop – Heritage Flower Farm.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading about native NJ plants and invasive perennials. I went to a seminar at the library and they listed some nurseries that specialize in NJ plants. I’m hoping I can get to one of them this weekend. Every year I try to get more perennials planted. The reasoning is two-fold. I’d prefer not to keep spending hundreds of dollars every spring buying plants. I’d also like to minimize how much bending and clearing and planting I need to do. I will probably keep buying tropicals to put in the big planters I use to line my front walk, but it would be helpful if most of the permanent beds were perennials.

Under the heading of “can’t beat ’em, join ’em”, I’ve given up on trying to have creeping thyme between the front bed and the lawn. It didn’t seem to work as I hoped. This year I am digging up the little violet plants from the beds and planting them in the lawn in front of the bed. I don’t care about grass. The only saving grace about grass is I don’t have to care for it the way I do flowers. 🙂 I also took one of the clover plants and stuck that there as well. That’s another “weed” that seems to have inundated one of my garden beds. Let’s see how well it thrives when I WANT it to grow and spread. 🙂