Sarah in Illinois and I have entered into a friendly competition this spring to help us get our gardens in shape. We’re now at the conclusion of week 2 of this Dueling DIY. (Week 2 already, yipes!) Sarah is here today to share her first official update. You can check out all of the previous posts here.

Lots of rain and cool weather has continued here, and I was running out of time to work on this week’s challenge. I was getting nervous because I could just picture Julia having beautiful weather and getting ahead of me. (Ha-ha-ha. Be afraid, Sarah. Be very afraid). I was able to do a second till of the garden Tuesday before another round of rain came through, but that was as far as I had gotten.

However, the forecast called for perfect weather Sunday, and I had a list a mile long to work on. Of course at the top of the list were projects on our challenge. I can’t mark very much off of the list yet, but I sure got a great start.

The first thing I did was divide up my two big mums and spread them around the deck.

I was easily able to make 7 different clumps of plants. I dug holes and planted them and watered them well.

While I was doing that, Steve changed the oil and put new blades on the mower. Then I mowed while he tilled the garden for the third time and then we decided where our “annual garden” would go.

We made a few first passes over then new garden, but I still have to make some type of borders and plant it.

The foreground is our new bed for plants that won’t get tilled up every year such as strawberries and asparagus and in the background is our yearly vegetable garden. You can see the fencing ready for the cucumbers and sugar snap peas. And in front of it is the hill for our row of potatoes.

The beautiful weather also meant it was time to bring out our deck furniture from the barn. I got everything scrubbed and hosed off. I let it all sit in the sun to dry and then we set it up on the deck. We finished our hard day of yard work with brats and shish-kabobs on the grill and ate it outside on the deck. It was a perfect end to a perfect day.

Despite all of that hard work I was only able to check one thing off of my challenge list:

• Make some kind of designated area (possibly raised bed) for perennial vegetables such as asparagus and strawberries.
• Neaten, and define north flower bed and add mulch.
• Divide mums and spread around deck
• Make a designated gardening area complete with workbench.

It may not look like much was accomplished, but I am setting myself up for the kill! So how was your weekend, Julia?

Oooh. See how she throws in that little jab at the end? We’re pretty much tied up right now. Sarah and I have each officially crossed just one thing off our lists. However, I have big plans for both Matt and me this coming weekend. Watch out, Sarah.