After getting all the ornamental plants in the ground, it was time to turn my attention to the veg beds. It mostly involved slogging a lot of soil – Forty-eight 25 Litre bags of soil to be exact.

Once the beds were filled, it was pretty simple to get them all planted up. From front to back – catnip (in the left pot), strawberries, chives (in the right pot), squash, carrots, beans, garlic, asparagus, grape tomatoes, cucumbers and snap peas.

It’s mostly seeds…

But I did buy the grape tomato plants. And there were a few seedlings (beans, peas and one small squash plant) from my attempts at starting early.

And those pops of colour you see…

Some natural pest control thanks to some marigolds.

Now I don’t have a tonne of experience growing vegetables, so fingers crossed it all works!

After yesterday’s post, you won’t be surprised to learn that, once again, I didn’t get many stitches in the thistle this weekend

But I did managed to complete the green bits, and get a start on the second thistle flower. I’m actually probably about half done – this just isn’t a big piece. But it’s definitely going to be a pretty one.

Remember all those plants I ordered in Winter? They all arrived an this weekend was time to get them all in the ground.

Time for a plant-a-thon. It doesn’t look like much, because they are all bulbs and bare root plants (basically roots with no growth yet).

The bits of green you can see are plants I dug up and moved from other spots in the gardens, plus a few perennials I got at the garden centre when I was buying soil, because I really appear to have a plant addiction.

Most of the plants went in the new front garden, and the borders surrounding the raised beds. In about a month or so, both spaces are going to look totally different.

I was thrilled that the garden centre still carried the two poppies I had at the townhouse.

These two look so great together. I got two of each, a set for out front, and one set for out back.

The spring bulbs in the front porch boxes were pretty much done, so I got a few new plants to go with the pansies… a couple calibrachoa, and these beautiful carnations.

And hanging above them…

I have always loved fuchsias, and this particular type just blew me away! And now the porch has a lovely pink and white theme.

And I love fuchsias so much, I got some for the bird bath.

I bought 10, but the birdbath only holds nine so…

One ended up in this cute little solar light/planter I found a few months back. It’s joined by some dahlias, because who doesn’t love dahlias!?!

And as if all this wasn’t enough…

I decided to use all the empty nursery pots to plant some more seeds.

Nothing to do now, but sit back and watch everything grow!

I’d like to wish a Happy Mother’s Day to Mother’s of all kinds, but especially my Mom, who is the absolute best mother of all time.

Here’s a virtual bouquet for you all – fresh from my garden!

We are approaching a bit of an in-between time in the garden. Most of the spring bulbs are starting to fade, though I do have some later blooming daffodils and tulips coming.

Some of the fancier tulips bloom a bit later

Can you believe this big fluffy thing is a tulip??? If you didn’t see the stem and leaves you could easily mistake it for a peony or a even a rose.

These little ground-cover tulips are new this year. They are basically a short, mini tulips. And these ones have such an incredible shade of bright pink! I’m completely wowed!

And remember I told you I got a bonus colour in my Grape Hyacinth (Muscari) mix?

Well I got two others! That first, some what mutant-looking one is a type of “Double Muscari”. I don’t know which type, but it’s pretty wild. The second one, I’m pretty sure, is “Night Eyes” – a deep dark purple with those pretty white edges. I had it on my to-buy list, but didn’t buy it because it was a wee bit pricey. But it seems a few bulbs snuck into my mix anyway!

My first iris has bloomed! This is a very special iris and long-time readers will recall it. I don’t know the name of it, (though I suspect it’s one called “Superstition”. It came from Mom’s She gave me a piece of hers when I moved into the townhouse. It did beautifully there and I had several clumps.

I only brought one clump with me, but it’s done just as well here and I split it up last year so now I have it in both the front and back yards.

There are many more irises to come too!

Most of the Daffodils are done, but this one has just started

It’s a Poet’s Daffodil, and it’s one of the first daffodils to be cultivated. I’ve believe that started around the 1600s. It’s not a big daffodil, but it’s certainly a pretty one. I have several throughout the gardens, though this one is the first to bloom

In other news… there are a couple things that have happened, but shouldn’t have.

The first is that a couple clumps of snap dragons survived the winter. Not re-seeded (though that’s rare enough here) – but are actually growing from the same plant!

The second is a re-seeding. When I first saw sprouts in the garden, I thought a foxglove had reseeded. And that’s pretty normal for fox glove. I left the little sprouts, because I absolutely adore fox gloves and I’m not about to turn down more.

But I a few weeks later I checked on them…

I’m pretty sure those are Cosmos seedlings!!! I have NEVER had Cosmos re-seed! I’m going to let them grow a bit, then I’ll dig them up and move them about to different places in the gardens. The Cosmos looked amazing last year, so I’m quite happy to have more.

I’ve got some big gardening plans for this weekend, so stayed turned for more dirty fun!

His Lordship would like to remind you that this coming weekend is the perfect time to get outside and enjoy the flowers!

I would like to remind his Lordship that the Pearly Everlasting is FINALLY growing nicely, and he really needs to stop laying on it!!!

With the Seascape socks done and dusted, I wanted to have something new on the needles. As you know, I haven’t been knitting much, and with garden season officially here, the available time has been cut even further, but I still like to have something on the go so I can just pick it up whenever the mood strikes.

And socks are the perfect thing for that.

The yarn is Knit Picks Stroll and the colourway is Gumball. I originally ordered it to make something for my neice, Rowan. But when I got it in my hands, I decided I wanted to keep it all to myself.

So these will be an pair of ankles socks just for me. The cuff is 3″ long, and knit in 2-2 rib. The foot will just be plain stockingknit.

While I am already on the gusset of these, I don’t expect them to go much further very fast. My digging adventures on the weekend were one of the biggest jobs on my list – but there’s still lots of others out there. The weekends just aren’t long enough to do it all, so that means working on my to-do list after work.

Maybe sometime in June things will slow down a little…

The finer weather has brought about the return of the toads!

I came across several as I was working in the yard over the weekend. So far, they’ve all been pretty small. None the size of Anthony Hopkins, who hasn’t made a return to our side porch yet.

And of course, the return of the toads means it’s time for Lemmy to discover them!

He was surprisingly gentle…

No claws used, but I still don’t fully trust him, so I relocated our tiny visitor to another garden.

I’m sure Lemmy will get his paws on a toad INSIDE the catio soon enough. Hopefully he decides they aren’t tasty enough to cause too much trouble.

As you can imagine, not a lot of stitches got put into my thistles this weekend. I basically worked outside until I ran out of light, not leaving a whole lot time time in the evening for stitching.

But I did manage to add some more green – finishing up the leaf on the bottom and extending the stems up to the other buds. There’s still some filling in to do before I start on the other thistle flowers, and the butterfly at the top is a long way off.

But there’s no deadline for this. A stitch or two here and there is fine for now.

We finally got some decent weather this weekend, and I spent most of the weekend looking like this…

What was I doing that got me so dirty? Digging.. digging, and digging some more.

Well, actually, first I got some mulch down on all the non-planted areas of Edible Alley (and Willow Grove tucked away behind it.)

Then I got out my shovel and removed all the turf in a nice little border all the way around.

And then I topped them up with some nice black earth. We have really nice sandy loam here, so the black earth is really just a bonus for the plants.

Those new borders will be planted up with a whole pile of perennials. I won’t say just what yet, because I’m really not sure myself. I have two boxes of bare-root plants sitting in the house, and another two on the way. Plus… all the garden centres have opened, and I may have snagged a new plant or two when I was getting mulch and soil.

I also took advantage of the nice weather to paint up a could of things. First was the old raised bed I had the strawberries in. (Next weekend, it and all the other raised beds, will get filled with soil.) Second was the old wooden ladder I’d gotten last year at a garage sale. I’m going to experiment with growing squash vertically, and it’s going to serve as my trellis.

And as if all that wasn’t enough, I also removed the turf for a new bed out front.

I had to remove at least some of the lawn to plant the climbing rose I have for the trellis. And I thought, why not just made a bed the whole length of the walkway to balance the driveway garden on the other side? I wanted to make it just as wide as the driveway garden, but to be perfectly honest… I just couldn’t dig any more! That’s okay, it can be expanded next year.

Like the back, it got topped up with some nice black earth too. My climbing roses will be here this week, and you can bet your bottom dollar I’ll be planting them right away!