Woah. Where have I been?

Taken down by one of the worst chest cold and sickies I have had in a long, long time.  Out of work for days. Some nights I even dreamed about oxygen masks.  Then came the fun part of Awesome Husband and I ping-ponging the illness back and forth for close to a month.  Geeeyah.

I was able to start the tomatoes, peppers, and lettuce last weekend.  (I think it was then? It's been such a phlegmy blur)

These little cabbages:

 

now have double leaves and will be transplanted this weekend into bigger pots. More lettuce will be planted this weekend.

Now, everything just seems to depend on the sun.  I am pretty sure I'm finally getting enough sun for the peas and perhaps some lettuce.  I'm not quite comfortable putting anything else out there for now.    I watch the sun all the time these days.  I check my garden multiple times on the weekend to see what is getting sun and how much.  I won't do the "official sun shine chart" for a few more weeks, but next year I may do it once a month in late-winter/early-spring to really get a better handle on when I can start to get things out.

Fruit

I decided to reign myself in this year about the raspberry plants.  I do not actually want to reign myself in, but tripling the size of the vegetable garden needs to be enough for the moment.  I'm still going to add blueberry bushes to the front yard and many, many, many more strawberry plants--but that has to be good for the moment.  

Speaking of fruit, the blueberry bushes are flowering

I'm not really sure how many bushes we need.  The one last year was definitely not enough. I got a second one a bit late in the season.  10 plants, perhaps?  5?  We're doing the tiny tophat variety and--oh gads--I can't remember the other name. I'll keep the bigger bush in the pots and plant the tophats.    I'd love to be able to have enough to freeze for the winter, but I suspect that I'll need larger plants for something like that. 

Awesome Husband is going to help me finish up the last 10x4 bed this afternoon.  It had been complete, but our entire backyard is on a serious slope.  I need to raise the bottom of it about 6" to level it out some. whoops.  Well, at least I didn't start planting in it and drowning all the west-side plants.

I hope to get photos of my bare-but-complete main garden.  I'm so dang proud of it.  Except for some of the lawn removal, I did it all by myself.  Looking back, it wasn't rocket science or anything--but it is the first time I built something that didn't come out of an Ikea box.