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Saturday Morning Garden Blogging - Vol. 21.23 - Is it truly mundane? [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-06-07

This Garden Blog is published every Saturday at 9AM EST, year round. We comment throughout the week and have some funny content for the group each Sunday. Thank you all for stopping by this week and we hope to see you next Saturday as well.

We are a friendly and active bunch, our diaries a verdant palate cleanser from the heavier fare in the the world. Please share your stories, anecdotes and photos. Ask questions, or simply introduce yourself.

Just sitting in my hole.

This time of year I am a sweaty filthy mess. I sit in the grass to do much of my garden work. Wearing a dress (chigger prevention) that sometimes rides up. I leave it because I am tired of pulling it down for the tenth time. I have much to do and finite sunlight. Besides, that is what boy shorts are for; I let them do their job. Usually a spider hitches a ride on my clothing in the evening and feeds at night, after I am showered and settled. I am delicious, so I have heard.

End of the day, I have smears of compost/manure, often with a sexy dusting of mulch or blood meal on top. Everywhere. Turns out that is not the kind of mud that makes a facial so great for your skin.

So might be acne. Might be a bug bite, as I sit, kneel and step through their homes as I scoot, crawl and traipse around my garden.

You know you want it.

DJ and some of the sexy mulch. What we have here is fresh cherry leaf chop-n-drop and dried maple leaves I saved last fall. This a sweet pepper patch.

Isn’t it funny how if you take a silent moment to really think about what you are doing right then, the specialness of it all becomes clear?

Stark Brother’s is having their end of season sale. The window to get a good tree for a low price is very small, per condition of the tree . Additionally, in about a week, it will be too hot to ship. I couldn’t have gotten luckier with my timing. I picked up a standard Fantasia nectarine and a semi-dwarf Suncrest peach tree for ridiculously low prices. Yeah, it is a risk, but I like a little challenge. With a money back guarantee.

My Flat Wonderful Peach Tree and some iris

In fact, checking the website now, Friday evening, the sale nectarine is out of stock. Whew, my impulsivity sometimes pays off.

There is a tree planting approach called the Multi Year Method. Supposed to get you fruit faster. I dug a hole 3 feet wide and 2 feet deep. After moving rocks and exposing the compacted clay soil underneath, of course. So here I am, digging this huge hole for the new tree and it’s...fun. Geology. I get a kick out of seeing all the different layers of earth on a cliff-side, or shined up in a deep dug rock. How I would have loved to dig a huge hole in my yard as a kid, but that would have been a hard no in our small yard on a rented lot. But this is MY yard. And I can dig most places in it, if I want to. After a call to utilities for marking. Safety first.

Back is sore, but I took it slow. It did not even take that long, which shocked the hell outta me.

I will move more rocks away from the hole, as wood mulch will be the soil cover for the roots. The fewer rocks, the better. I cringe when I see rocks used as a tree “mulch”. With clay soil, the compactness of rocks on the roots nearer the trunk is not ideal.

The Hole and the Soils, separated.

If the nectarine tree fails, it won’t be because of anything I have done. That tree is getting the Luxe Package. As are the pepper plants that will rim the edge, as I ran out of room in the garden.

Petunia Just Because It’s Pretty

Hole dug, I head inside to start dinner. It’s not a cohesive menu, just a few things I want to try. A tortellini salad recipe from the NYT, a fruit salad with what I picked up at the store, and fresh garlic naan, to use up the red pepper hummus I purchased a few weeks ago and never opened.

While the naan dough is rising, I run outside to get some photos of the garden after the rain, another fleeting event on a dry prairie. Notice that the arugula is looking perfect. Not the biggest fan of it, but my husband is, so I grab a rain refreshed handful for the tortellini salad. Catching a garden green before it bolts is special, as the harvest window is quite short here.

The Salad. It was good, but not my thing. Husband loved it.

You Need to be a Sub, but here is the recipe for the Tortellini Pasta Salad

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