Completed work on rear path and laying turf (nearly).  Several rolls left to do Sunday morning.  Hope to add a few photo's to the blog over the next couple of days.  My neighbour has a sycamore tree that is shedding it's seeds.  Overhangs my backyard - it will be time to try some tree surgery soon.  There are some branches that are looking precarious and about to fall. 

Had a hectic few weeks.  My paerents are visiting from the UK and having a few weeks of R&R; including putting a path in the back garden (aggregate, paving pebbles and stepping stones provided).  May not sound like a holiday but my Dad enjoys it.  It was a great surprise to find it done after a short business trip to Iowa City and Minneapolis.

 

The plants I ordered from Richters arrived (passion fruit, passion flower and cat thyme.  All were in good condition.

 

Belatedly planted some seeds at the weekend (sunflower, borage, parsely and basil).

We had a fairly productive weekend.  Last year we had planted some root ginger (from local supermarket), it had grown well but died back during the winter (we had tried to over winter it in the house).  It has come back nicely.  Similarly, the chives, mint thyme are coming back strongly. 

 

I found some turmeric root in our local farmers market; it is part of the same family as ginger so we are going to try the same technique.

 

Also we planted three angelica plants (a large biennial, which can exceed 5 foot).  The young stems can be candied for cake making.   More mundane tasks completed: set up sprinklers, weeding and put down some mulch to stop the weeds re-appearing.

This weekend we attempted to cut down the amount of crab grass we get this year (had planned to do it last weekend but rain was terrible, for once it was better to be living in the north of New Jersey.  Lawn is now "thatched" - raked over to remove the dead stuff, fertilized and treted with a dressing anti crab grass weeder.  We even turned over our compost heap.  Not bad going following a winter of inactivity. 

 

We went to our favourite herb farm (Well Sweep - listed in Links) in New Jersey and bought some plants (hardy lavendar, angellica and bay).  We did some online shopping and put in an order to Richters (link below) - I am going to have a go at tobacco, chile, peppers and sunflower from seed.

We moved into a new house a little over two years ago.  Our rear yard was construction rubble, our front garden had a lawn of sorts and was (is) mainly crab grass. 

 

We have put in several flower beds (mainly with herbs and a few bulbs), cleared the rubble, dug the back yard (tree roots from an adjacent property were a real problem) and fenced in the back yard.

 

We have had our first few bulbs appear, following a cold and snowy winter: