Taking Shape

The yard is slowly coming together. I've built paths with our pile of wood from the ligustrum, hackberry, crepe myrtle, and red bud that got chopped down. In my dream world these paths will eventually have some kind of stepping stones with thyme or sedum growing between.

I laid these areas out just to get an idea of where I might want to plant things.  It was a very organic process. Didn't really think about it much. 

There is an incredible amount of satisfaction to seeing the paths laid out because it makes it easier to visualize the future of the yard. It also gives us a chance to try out the paths ways  and adjust them as needed.  So far, the paths are working very well indeed.

New Thoughts on Veggie Garden

Originally, I had planned on my brassicas being transplants. Somehow I got the idea that in Austin that is just what you did and that for some reason it wasn't good to try to plant the brassicas from seed. This morning I found a website that said broccoli transplants were actually pretty finicky and they do better from seed sown directly in the garden. In the spirit of experimentation, I'm going to do both. I will have a few transplants (one of each maybe?), but I'm also going to sow some brassica seeds directly into the raised beds. As I have found with the cover crop, seeds are so much more fun to see growing. I have another kind of cover crop seed sprouting, maybe all 5 different kinds of covercrop that I planted will grow especially since we are getting some rain on a regular basis. I also think Andrew is right that plants just want to grow and will try their hardest though like small children they may need some scaffolding. I'm not sure I need to do as much as I'm being told or reading that I need to do. The Square -Foot Gardening book by Mel Bartholomew also seems to suggest that it is not required to be so complicated to get a nice crop of veggies and other edible plants.