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Finally, a warm day. I had a couple of hours this afternoon to work in the yard. Spent the time weeding the bank down by the road. I bought a special hoe just for the purpose. Am I lame, or what? I'm all excited about a new hoe. The hoe was great though. Well worth it. It's so much faster than pulling up weeds by hand. It has a really small blade, which I needed for weeding in between the daffodils and daylilies. That bank is about 8' × 50' and I managed to get the whole thing weeded in three hours.

And had a nice conversation with the next door neighbor. He came over to chat while I was weeding. He told me that he didn't understand what we were doing when we put all that soil down last year, but now that it looked so nice he could see the method to our madness. I was like, gee, thanks, I think!

Next I have to get that bank mulched before the weeds come back, and plant the marigolds that I bought yesterday. I'm going to plant them in a row in front of the bank, and then put in small sunflowers to fill in the gaps between the daylilies. That's the plan, at least.

Due to the miserable weather I didn't get any gardening done this past week. So I guess I'll just write about previous gardening progress instead.

I don't think I ever said so explicitly, but you might have noticed from the photo that we finished turning the septic tank into a flower bed a couple of weeks ago. We still have to even out the path around it, but it's basically done.

With two truckloads of soil in there, it ought to look more impressive. I guess it will look better when it's full of flowers. We planted pansies in the front, a few snapdragons, and then I sowed all the rest with tall zinnias. I had to cover them with straw to protect them from frost (I had jumped the gun and sowed the seeds during that warm spell two weeks ago). But I took the straw off last week and lots of them are sprouting. And to make the bed more fun, I made my first foray into lawn ornaments.

Once that was done, we started on the next project: raised beds for the vegetable garden. Georg and I did some digging before he went to NY, and then while he was gone I got one of the two beds entirely put together. 4' × 10' × 12" high, plus we removed the native soil to a depth of 6". We didn't use treated lumber because we were concerned about chemicals leaching into the vegetables. So we coated the wood with linseed oil, and lined the bed with roofing shingles. I guess we could have used treated lumber after all, since the shingles make a barrier between the wood and the soil. Oh well, next time we'll know better.

It took way longer than it should have because I wasted all afternoon making 3 trips to Home Depot: first, I discovered that my screws were too long. I bought 2" screws, only to find out that 2 by 12s are really 1.5" thick. I was told later that all lumber is like that. It's 2" thick before they mill it down. So I went back to the store and got 1.5" deck screws. Which was actually a good thing because the new box came with a screwdriver bit, which I didn't have.

Next, I had just gotten started attaching the shingles to the lumber when my staple gun ran out of staples. No problem, back to Home Depot and buy a box of staples. Only to get back home and discover the staples don't fit. Who the *!@# had the brilliant idea not to make staple guns in standard sizes? Sheesh.

By this point I was feeling out of sorts and cranky, so I had to sit down for a few minutes and calm myself before going to Home Depot for the third time. (I should also add that on all these trips I was wearing the same clothes I'd worn all day, including getting the truckload of soil in the morning: my work pants, which are baggy knit pants with paint stains all over them, and a sweatshirt whose front was completely covered with dirt. The whole shirt was one big smudge. Plus a dirty gray headband, and a "don't mess with me" look. Oh yeah, I was a sight.

Anyway, I finally got the staple situation resolved and got back to work. I had one very clever idea: using concrete blocks to hold the wood in place while I drilled the holes. I would never have been able to assemble the bed myself otherwise. Unfortunately, this brilliant idea was offset by one extremely stupid idea: to assemble the bed up by the house, where my drill was, rather than down the yard where it would be located. Did you know that lumber is heavy? I didn't know that before, but I sure do now. With difficulty I could pick up one of those boards by myself; now I had to move three of them, plus a dozen roofing shingles. I thought I was going to dislocate a shoulder dragging that thing halfway across the yard.

With the bed ready to go I wanted to get started on planting right away, but the weather kind of messed up my plans. There's no point sowing seeds when it's this cold anyway. I did manage to plant a couple dozen snapdragons on the bank along the driveway. And I bought about a hundred marigolds for down by the road. I like those little French marigolds, not the big ones that look like yellow pom-poms. I really need to get started on weeding down there. That's what I was going to do today actually. I even went outside to do it a couple of times, but then the wind would blow and I'd hurry back inside. It's way early to plant marigolds, but as long as I protect them from frost I think they'll be okay. I brought them inside tonight just in case, but this is the last possible frost we're supposed to have this week, I hope the last one this year.

As I just commented in another blog, I pretty much ignore the official calendar in regards to changing seasons. Late March is ridiculously late here for the first day of spring. Just as, I'm sure, it's ridiculously early for many folks up north.

I used to think that the beginning of spring was when the daffodils bloom, but that would mean it's been spring for almost a month. That's a bit early even for me. A better definition, I think, is that spring begins when the frost-free nights are more common than the nights below freezing. So according to the Sarah calendar, it's been spring for almost a week. Happy spring!

Speaking of spring, we saw the most adorable Easter cookies at Saladelia. I didn't know it was possible for any food to be so adorable without being nauseating. The cookies are shaped like animals and iced, and each package contains a large animal cookie and a little cookie accessory. A bunny rabbit and a tiny carrot; a bluebird and a little nest; a sheep and a baby lamb. They even had a little miniature metal bird bath that you could put the bluebird cookie in. Who knew Easter candy could be so darling?

And speaking of spring weather, I'm tickled by the coincidence that led me to buy a cute pair of rain boots on super sale yesterday, only to wake up and find it raining today. I guess fashion does have value after all!

As you may know, we didn't get married today. I'll spare you the pity party and get on with what we did do. We started early with a trip to the city dump. We dropped off about half the concrete, and picked up a load of compost. The concrete weighed in at .3 ton, which surprised both of us. It didn't seem like that much while we were tossing it into the dumpster.

The new truck drove great and handled the job really well. It sank visibly with the soil in it, I was a little worried that we had overloaded it, but it never did that fishtailing thing that my friend David's truck would always do. I love my truck!

After the landfill (with a stop to take the truck home of course), we had a nice lunch at Saladelia -- who by the way serve humongous lunches, I got soup and salad and I couldn't begin to eat it all -- and then picked up our wedding rings. Georg's was the store sample but mine had been made to order. They look great and mine fits perfectly, but the price was a bit of a shock. Over 50% more than the estimate! I know, I know, the price of gold has skyrocketed recently. And she did say it was only an estimate. And if they had told me this price in advance, I would have been okay with it. It was just, like I said, a shock to get a final price so much higher than what she had said two weeks ago.

When we got home we got right to work on the hole in the ground. And we got so much done! First Georg knocked out the last concrete blocks from the walls, which I hadn't been able to get on Wednesday. Then we dug out the last of the clay, down to about 2.5 feet. We piled some of the clay up at one end where the path is going to be. And then we unloaded all the compost. I really didn't think we were going to get that whole thing done. But we did! It went pretty fast because we didn't need the wheelbarrow. We just pulled the truck up next to the hole, and shoveled it over the side.

We couldn't quite fill the hole, about 3/4 full or maybe a little more. Over the next few days I'll try to dig out the clay nearby to make the bed bigger. Not so deep as the septic tank, but deep enough for annuals. Maybe a foot deep. We're still going to have extra soil from the next truckload. I guess we'll have to pile it up somewhere until we come up with another place for it.

Now we have reservations at Jibarra, a Mexican restaurant that sounds amazing. Review to follow. I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't rather have been in Las Vegas getting married. But aside from that, I can't think of a better way to spend this day.