The Farm Report - end of May

The weather this spring has been unbelievable.  Only a few really hot days and many, many days in the low 80's.  The past two have been downright chilly in the morning and the highs have been in the upper 70's.  Is this really Las Vegas?  I am NOT complaining.  It'll be 150 degrees in the shade all too soon...New things happening in the garden:  I'm in the process of adding walkways between the beds.  After much deliberating, I decided to use cedar mulch rather than stone, even though our long-haired dog collects it and brings it into the house.  Stone absorbs too much heat and being that this city is mostly made of concrete, I thought I'd go for something a little less, well, hard.  Besides, when we water, the mulch absorbs water and adds a little humidity to things.  (Nice in a place where there's only about 2% humidity on good days).

I am in the process of creating a space for a fire pit in the corner of the yard.  This is an irksome chore which involves digging up old gravelly rocks, cleaning out all the debris, adding new weed block fabric, then putting all the cleaned gravelly rocks on top of it.  Above, left, you can see where I began this morning.  Above, right is where I left off this afternoon.  The dark line toward the back is the weed block fabric that hasn't been covered.  I know it looks like the whole area has been covered with the rocks; I WISH the whole area was covered with rocks, but it ISN'T, Blanche.  I do have enough covered that I could begin lugging wood from the back yard and pile it up.  But I was too tired to think about it when I left off.

The husband (wonderful man) dug a new bed a few weeks ago and I have filled half of it with peppers.  (The other half still hasn't been filled in with the dirt that was dug out, nor have I been to the nursery to purchase soil with which to amend said dirt.  There are only so many hours in the day.)  And I am pleased to report that there are baby peppers growing on almost all the plants.  The tomatoes (9 plants in all, scattered about the place) are thriving and many have tomatoes in various stages.  Exciting.

And finally, here is the place where the husband and I take our morning coffee.  We've been able to do this only a few times, since school isn't out yet and the wind has been something hideous on the weekends of late.  However, we're looking forward to summer mornings and dining al fresco in the evenings.  It almost makes one forget that it's Las Vegas...