Early last week, we got a chore done that I'd been putting off for a year and more. When we built the first of the raised beds, we didn't realize that siting it on a slope without lining it would cause the dirt to leak out over time - heaven knows why that didn't occur to us, but it didn't - or maybe I was just a bit too impatient to get it up and running. Anyway, once we realized that the dirt was slowly vanishing, I put a note on my mental gardening "to do" list to empty and line it in between seasons. And, while "between seasons" might be starting to push it as a description for this time of year, we got it lined and should be able to retain the dirt until the weed barrier we use for lining decides to dissolve (or whatever weed barrier does).
Once that was in place, I could finally put the leaky hoses down on all 3 boxes (the ones on newly designated perennial bed are in place temporarily until the asparagus surfaces and I can re-bury it and even out the soil level in that box). And then it was just a matter of hooking up the timer and valve (the timer is still set and going after a winter with last summer's battery - I didn't replace it, yet) and turning on the outside spigot and we would have irrigation on all boxes.
Which was great for about 15 seconds. That's how long it took my husband to figure out where "that dripping sound" was coming from in the house. Apparently, the spigot froze up last winter before we had everything unhooked (probably the same early and depressing freeze that wiped out too many ripe tomatoes to count), and the pipe cracked, inside a cupboard in the kitchen. We didn't notice it at the time, but it was resoundingly obvious this past weekend. After mopping up, we hooked the timer and everything up to the hose that originates just outside the back door (the raised beds are in the front yard), and started calling plumbers. I'm still not entirely sure why the leak only appears when I turn the spigot on - it's a ways inside the house and I would think the valve is downstream of the crack in the pipe. Something to do with a freeze-proof valve, I'm told (apparently that's a bit of a misnomer).
It took almost a week to get artificial irrigation going this year - a week in which I am hoping the asparagus were enjoying the perfect moisture of beds that had absorbed about a foot of snow just before planting, rather than deciding it was too dry to put down roots here. The onion transplants seemed okay with the move, as did the overwintered chard, so I'm somewhat hopeful. None of the seeds has poked anything up yet - possibly also a factor of the delay in getting the water turned on. And I haven't actually checked since maybe last Wednesday.
Nothing got done over the past weekend. The college kid came home for Easter, and I spent much of the weekend cooking Easter dinner for 13. Nearly everything came out nicely, although the rice side dish turned into mush - note to self not to bother with recipes that feature rice in a Crock Pot again. And as is pretty usual when I cook for a crowd, we had way too much food (leftover macerated berries and custard sauce - good. leftover mediterranean salsa for filet steaks, with no filet steaks leftover - not so good.) And also as usual, the "diet" croissants (from the recipe in Frenchwomen Don't Get Fat) left nothing over at all - not even a crumb. Three days worth of steps to make them, and worth every nanosecond.
I've more or less figured out what to order to do the blueberries (in containers) and finally mulch the walking areas around the raised beds, so that will probably be the next big gardening activity, since we won't be planting anything else for 2 weeks or so (tomatoes in wall-o-waters, I think can go in that early). Maybe it's time to prune the roses or something.
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