Spring and Pie Day

 What a week! Spring sprang and stuff started happening.

 I set my seeds to germinate on Thursday the 5th...I checked them on Saturday - two days later, but it had seemed like forever - but finally, the following Wednesday I had some action.

They look like sperms, but the little tails are small roots, meaning the seeds should be viable for sprouting.

All three varieties of my tomatoes (Cherokee Purple, Black Russian, Beefsteak) had germinated, and the Jalapeno peppers that I had put in a day later (when I remembered I had them).

The following Sunday my Datil peppers had germinated, but not the Sweet Banana peppers. They may be slower, or maybe were old seeds, I'm not sure.

I germinated way more seeds than I needed plants, but I didn't know how many would be viable, or how many will go on to actually become plants. I'll share any leftovers with family or others.

One day back in January, the weather had been nice enough to get out to work on our chicken house, but unfortunately we couldn't get much done because we'd ran out of materials.

I think that issue has been taken care of now,

I happened to refresh my FB wall right at the right time and caught a lady offering some "large wood and wire pet pens for chickens and others" on one of the freebie groups.
I typed "Interested" before the post was even a minute old, ha! (But it was mere seconds before the next person also typed "interested", so it was a close call.)

We took J's cousin with us to help (and he'll end up with a good bit of this stuff, also) and it still took a day and half to tear everything apart and load it all.

It came just at the right time, as nice as the weather turned off we probably would have broke down and went and bought the rest of the materials we needed to finish it, which would have blown the whole "completely free" part of the project.

I think not only will we be able to finish the chicken house, I believe there's enough there to frame in for screening my back porch. Maybe even several other projects, but I don't have any other plans in mind right now, and also J's cousin wants some of it for some of his projects at his place.
Rather him get it and use it than it lay out there and rot before I decide to do something with it.

Sunday was a gorgeous, sunny nice day, with the ground still nice and wet/soggy from some good rain on Friday.

One of the things I'd wanted to do before this Spring/Summer was move my Blueberry bushes and Hydrangea flowers, so Sunday seemed like a good day to do that.

I've had my Blueberry bushes for years...like 5 or so years, I can't remember exactly, but at any rate, they weren't growing/producing/doing what they should have been doing for their age.

I had them planted down in the back yard along the fence, where they'd get plenty of sun, and - I thought? - water, since the yard slants down in that direction.
But no, apparently they didn't like it down there.
So I thought I'd move them up closer to the house, like we did the garden this past year (that did well until we left town and no one watered it while we were gone).

A few days ago, I was looking up something or other and had read something about not planting something under a Black Walnut tree.
I remember hearing before that some (all?) trees have some sort of defense that they drop some kind of something to keep so much undergrowth from overtaking them....or something to that effect.
Anyway, we don't have a Black Walnut tree here, so I filed the info away and went on about my business.

But then the day I went out to move my Blueberry bushes, I was looking around the area, trying to decide where to put them exactly, and I noticed something. 

I don't know if you can see it, but there's a large circle around the Pecan tree where the growth is a lot more sparse than the rest of the area.

I'm thinking I didn't want to plant my Blueberries in that area, either.
I ended up putting them uphill from the Pecan tree circle, near the clothesline. 

 I also dug my Hydrangea up.  These things are so aggravating.
I have these because my Mom prunes hers (just grabs parts of it with her hand and rips it off) and tosses the tore off parts at the burn pile, and she'll go back later to burn and find the things have taken root and started growing!
She dug them up and brought them to me, and I planted them in a nice spot, out front of the garden shed, watered, babied them, and nothing. Wouldn't grow. Didn't die, but wouldn't grow.

The front of the garden shed gets the afternoon sun, so year before last I decided to move them to the backyard where the morning/Southern sun shines most. Planted them in a nice row, along the fence line - apparently in the Pecan tree venom area. Ugh.

Instead of re-planting them right now, I put them in pots (which may have been a huge mistake, I have a terrible record at trying to grow anything in pots/containers). But I figure I can move them around to different places in the yard and see if I can figure out the magic growing spot before planting them somewhere.

And last but not least -

Well, Sunday dinner was just spaghetti, nothing special, but Saturday had been Ultimate Pi Day.

I don't typically 'celebrate' all the This Day and That Day things (and especially not a Maths related Day), but 1) they said it was once in a 1,000 years/Lifetime thing, 2) it was also Albert Einstein's birthday, 3) I had to cook anyway, 4) I had been saving a can of Cherry pie filling for...I don't know what, but I didn't feel like making in a 'regular' day, knowing eating the pie crust (wheat) wasn't going to agree with my gut, so it seemed like a good excuse to make it.

I made ham and cheese pies, an apple pie (with my homemade canned apple pie filling), and a Cherry pie. It's the half burnt one, because Broiler.

Sometimes it's fun to do something different.