What's a Little Rain?

 I got a really, really late start this morning.  And the body is more than a bit sore.  I was going to say from the neck down, until a headache decided to jump in as well.  There will be an epsom salt soak in a little while.

This is part of the strawberry patch.  This is also an area that I prefer to really deeply mulch every fall.  Because deep mulch keeps winds from whipping under the porch and against the house.  So my floors stay a bit warmer.

Anyways, the strawberry plants I bought, that survived to get planted, did well.  They are all planted in the middle section of a soda jug or vinegar jug that was filled with soil.  Now that the roots are well established, I pulled the plastic to use for new plantings.  And everything got a deep layer of mulch around the old and the new plantings.

I got about a third of the plantings done.  So that would be where all of the current existing plantings are in this picture.  I forgot to grab an after picture.  I'll do that tomorrow morning.  Because rain came to visit while I was doing this, and I just refused to give up.  So I kept going until I had emptied the wheelbarrow of mulch.

By then I was soaked and was really planning on calling it quits.  But I didn't quite feel that I had done enough work.  And while my back was very annoyed at the bending I had been doing, it seemed to be okay with the idea of digging.  As long as my feet and my weight did most of the work.

So I let my feet and weight do most of the work, although I did threaten the liriope with the mattock if it didn't stop being stubborn.

Not all of the liriope is gone.  But the front parts are.  I may actually have to resort to the mattock for the rest of it, but that's for another day.

Then I went ahead a set out the pots of plants that are going in next.  Those are four pots of black elderberry, sambucus nigra.  I got them as cuttings from a nursery about a year and a half ago.  They survived this long so it is time for them to get their permanent home.  These cultivars are Korsor and Samdyl.

Yes, I am crowding them to themselves.  The spacing between the elderberry, the house, and the camellia are all the correct spacing.  And yes, that means that this garden bed pretty much just doubled in width.  That falls into the "Oh my, less grass I need to mow." category.  And less grass to mow in a spot that is tedious to mow.

Anyways, back to spacing.  I'm good with the elderberry plants crowding each other.  They will provide a good hedge, and they will provide a plentiful supply of both flowers and berries for the household.  With the correct spacing between them and the house, they'll hide rainwater barrels pretty well when I can get to that project.

Now, off to eat breakfast. And then to dry off and get more laundry started.  Tomorrow is more strawberries, and hopefully at least one of the elderberries.

I'm leaving you with an image of one of the completed areas that is hidden behind the nandina in the above picture.  That is a tea olive.  In the long run, I'll be putting a walk path to the left side of it, because that is the path I have to take to the spigot.  And there are a few other things that need to happen in this area.  But I have to finish getting plants in the ground first.