Finally Ready to Plant

It rained all through late March and early April here, so I missed my usual dates for planting seeds in the garden. This week it was finally warm and dry enough for me to do some gardening in the evenings. Yesterday was a perfect day, and I really got down to work. Clara helped me plant seeds in the main annual bed (the one in front of the porch railing), which is the oldest part of the garden and the part I have done the most work on. The other beds are still mostly the grim clay I started with 8 years ago, and I was feeling discouraged as I stuck my shovel in. The bale of peat I had on hand hardly seem to make any different. So I went to my composter and discovered that, thanks to the mysterious alchemy of decay, I had four wagon loads of good compost ready to use, about five or six cubic feet. This is at least twice as much as I ever had before. So I dug all that in, weeding and thinning my overly aggressive plants (black-eyed susans, perennial argeratum) as I went, and by the time I was finished the day was nearly done. So I didn't get most of the seeds in the ground, but I got everything ready, and if the rain holds off today I will get the rest in this afternoon.