They are around a rhododendron, maple tree, and keeping a walk area on one side of the house clear.

Quick guesstimate is that he made enough mulch to cover about 400 square feet about 4 to 6 inches deep.

What’s funny is that’s leftovers from the absolute mess that the ground clearing guy we hired ripped out of the area. He ran EVERYTHING through a woodchiper and made a massive amount of mulch.

Tulips are blooming, and I just planted an American Plum sapling.

Plum

My county has(had?) some sort of rebate for both rain barrels and rain gardens, but neither has been updated in a year or so.

We went to a gardening class put on by the library and local Purdue extension office this week which was pretty fun. End of the month is one focused on fruit trees which we are looking forward to.

The beds themselves we were going to build out of some old deck boards that we still have laying around from some work a few years ago, possibly along with some old bike inner tubes to seal up gaps to keep soil from eroding out between boards. They are in decent enough shape for that. Hardest part for us is probably going to be figuring out a source for soil. We don’t have a spot in our yard to dig out from.

Poking around on market place it looks like I can get some 55 gallon plastic barrels for like $10 each, then it’s just some small modifications to make them rain barrels so that’s easy enough. Might spend the money to put a pump on it, it might be nice to be able to run a sprinkler off it.

First year my wife and I are going to try some small garden beds.

We have some spaghetti squash that started sprouting in a gourd we were having for dinner one night so we threw them in a pot to see what happens, and we are attempting to propagate some celery hearts.

Hopefully at some point in the near future the weather actually holds out in a way that I can build the garden beds.

Our main two things to figure out are where to get soild to fill the beds, and where on earth to actually get a not stupidly expensive rain barrel.