BigDog Speaks

Just about the time I THINK things should cool off (I am always several months on the wrong side), I get bit by the yard bug. You know the bug I mean, the one that prompts you to work in the yard and get things looking better, or perhaps the one that says it is time for a garden. It doesn't matter, it is always the same durn bug and it bites me at least once per year. This year it jumped on me even early for ME! I just had to put in a raised bed, actually two, two cinder blocks high and as wide and long as the space would permit.

[More:]

Fortunately for me, the space wasn't all that big so the cost of the blocks didn't quite break the bank, they just used it all but the pocket change. Now they are built, dry stacked in case I need/want to remove them, and filled with a mix of topsoil and manure. Now, I need seeds. The internet can be a dangerous place if you have plastic money, you can buy anything you need/want/can't do without. Yup, I found me a seed place and ordered some seeds. I opted to go with heirloom varieties since I have always figured they were more in line with the home gardener than the hybrids developed for farmers. Planting them seeds didn't take long and now I am chomping at the bit waiting to see them grow. Since my "garden" if you want to call it that, isn't using up my time, I prowled the yard and found more than I ever wanted to find as far as things to do. The remnants of some container gardening I had done a while back, now totally gone to weeds, needed to be emptied and cleaned up. In the process of doing this, I found that my containers were doing a bang up job growing ant nest! Every one of them was crawling with the biting buggers. I managed to do the unthinkable and displaced millions of critters without so much as a twinge of regret! All those containers are emptied, the dirt has been used to fill in my low spots in the yard and the ants have been dowsed with spray. Nope, killing those ants didn't hurt my conscience at all. I have puttered around with this stuff for several days now and I can only hope that yard bug will quit biting me so I can do some other stuff that will be way more fun. I advise you to keep a sharp eye out for the yard bug in YOUR yard, the only way to deal with it is to work it, you sure can't slap it.