Spring Garden Preparations

So, it isn't really spring, technically. But the forcast calls for temps in the 70s this week. Really? Sigh. This kind of weather makes me want to start planting and sowing and tilling and scattering and pruning and fertilizing.... you get the picture. But i must wait. Mostly.



Things i CAN get done in the next two weeks:

• Move last year's gourd planters from the back to the front, mix in compost and plant some onion sets and mustard seed
• Set the chicken tractor over the area the planters had been to prepare a new bed for the husband's 2010 gourd plants
  
• Bring the chickens to the front yard to do some mowing of emerging weeds and fertilizing of the lawn
• Occasionally till at the compost pile that is finishing, and keep adding goodies to the active pile
• Clean out the chicken coop with bleach (ick i know but they have lice, even more ick!) and dust all the birds with Sevin dust, repeating every 7-10 days a few times and keep closer tabs on changing out their bedding and sprinkling DE (diatomaceous earth) wherever they dust bathe
• Also with the chickens: i discovered they have pox, which is scary but not usually fatal. So for the next month or so i will monitor their health closely and apply tea tree oil and other healing ointments to their pox
  

and finally: relax a little! this is the time of year to harvest broccoli, enjoy garden fresh salads every night, enjoy the soft and green elbon rye in the front lawn, and get filled with anticipation to prune and take joy in the re emergence of currently sad looking perennials and bare patches of ground.

Spring is a fun time in Austin: the wildflowers will start popping up soon in successive displays of beauty, temperatures will be lovely without as many mosquitoes, and the lurking demon of summer heat will be ignorable - for now.