gardens & greenery

When the dump truck arrived last week, we found out that the contractor had the dump truck going through the neighbor's yard. That involved tearing down and reinstalling a fence, which shocked and horrified all of us. The neighbor was fine with it, but we decided that it wasn't really an optimal solution to the problem.

After careful calculation, we've decided to order the dirt and mulch from Lowe's. It's only about a $30 difference and we'll have the convenience of being able to store the excess in bags. We'll have to move all of the dirt and mulch back bag by bag, but the impact on our home and the neighbor's will be minimal.  

The bags do pose a bit of an ethical problem, for me, however. I would have preferred a dumptruck load so that we didn't have to deal with the excessive packaging from over 300 bags of product. I plan on saving the packaging, as I usually do, and will probably re-open fluffnfixings to share the recycled joy. I'll probably also be giving some away to a few of the websites that I'm on that deal with trades.

So, another week put off. I'm going crazy and itchy waiting for this stuff to get here so that I can make a late start on my gardens. It seems like I always start out with the best intentions and I never make it on time. We'll call it fashionably late, shall we? ;)

Stores are rotating out their holiday displays, and it's a great opportunity for anyone who uses wheat straw. We grabbed eight wrapped bails after a midnight run to Kroger. They were clearing out the straw for their Thanksgiving displays, and we got all of the Halloween hay. They told us to call after Thanksgiving to see when they were dumping the rest.

The hay is obviously not feed quality, since most of it has been sitting outside in the elements for a few weeks, but that's not a problem when you're using it as composting, seed cover, whatever. I used a few bales to cover the sink-compost hole in our backyard, and I suspect we'll have a decent crop of wheat there next summer. A bunch of little wheatlings were sprouting inside the plastic.

So, if you need hay, check out the stores and ask when they chuck their hay! :)