We started our fall garden cleanup today. My big accomplishment was cutting down and digging up a tree in our front yard that never did well, and my  back is constantly reminding me of today's work. Stupid getting older. The good thing is that beer is a pretty effective muscle relaxant, so that helps.

Our beds always look so barren when we prune things back; however, we've got a lot of bluebonnets and larkspur beginning to sprout, so if they make it through the winter, our spring garden is going to look really nice.

Mmmmm, fresh limes from our lime tree in the cocktails are a good thing.

I think we're finished for the year now getting the garden planted. We put in a few more flowers in the front bed today, planted some St Augustine sod to fill in bare patches, fertilized and mulched the back yard. Whew.

We keep the dogs inside until we've had a chance to water in the fertilizer, and Otto does not like being kept inside when it's sunny out back and the yard is full of smelly things he can roll in.

Also, the lime tree is full of flowers, so if we're lucky, we'll have lots of fresh, home-grown limes for our cocktails this summer.

Well we got the rest of the garden in today. It was a good day to work outside. We planted some more peppers, some cucumbers, and some tomatillos. Now, we just wait and see if they produce this year.

And on a side note, unlike peanut butter and chocolate, earrings and bird netting do not go together.

I love spring. Today we tilled the garden, got all our vegetables planted and replaced several things that didn't make it through the winter. Hopefully this year's garden will produce better than last year's.

Also today, one of our neighbors tried out anew technique to sell his house. He had a local talk radio station broadcasting from his house trying to get people to come to the open house. Need proof?

I got the compost bin finished and moved into the yard. Pictures are here. Next up is installing the hoophouse, but we've got one non-native, invasive tree to get out of the way first. (Mainly because when we cut it down, the branches are going to come down where the hoophouse will be.)

I've been putting off doing this for a while, but today I got started on building a new compost bin and a hoophouse for the garden. I've got some pictures up here.

I got a good start today, getting the pieces for the hoophouse cut and the frame of the compost bin assembled. All I need to do to finish the hoophouse is put it up in the garden. To finish the compost bin, I need to take down my current one and scavenge the hardware cloth from it. Both of these tasks are going to have to wait until it's a little less freezing and raining outside.

Susan put up some photos of the storm we had today.

As part of today's running around, we also picked up pretty much everything for our garden. Because of the rain, we couldn't get things in the ground today, so we'll have to do that over the week or next weekend.

I also learned that rainy days are the best days to visit nurseries.