Nobody's Mad

I don’t remember such a tender, lovely spring in the six years I have lived in Mariposa. Friday afternoon and night we had a gorgeous, pouring rain. Saturday there were specks of rain; today there were broken clouds… It was a beautiful weekend for us personally, and we were quietly busy here at Bullion Street (while the whole town buzzed for the Butterfly Festival, which didn’t seem much affected by the showers). Michael worked at his gardening projects, while keeping up with updates and other work for his network. I worked at my desk this morning and then helped a bit with the garden plans. Part of this afternoon we spent looking for our soils-testing kit, which we finally found on a cupboard shelf. The best part of the search was the serendipity. In the course of looking for the kit, we also found a garden sieve and an air filter that we needed. And we uncovered a reel lawn mower that should be perfect for the lawn here at Bullion Street. A simple dinner of chicken curry pie was followed by tea and our version of Jaffa cakes. I also splurged and made a few sort-of “Jaffa tarts,” with short pastry, orange filling and chocolate. Mmmmmmmm. I spent the evening adding up some recent expenses, doing the washing up, and working at my desk once again.  –MJH.

Took some compost that’s about five years old and rather wet due to rain.  Baked in oven for two hours at 250F to sterilize then spread on table to cool and dry.  Ran through sieve.  Baked the remaining wet clods at 300F for one hour and then cooled and ran through sieve.  Just a few stones and twigs rejected.

Mixed two parts of sieved compost with one part perlite.  Perlite could have been finer! Made about 20 qts of potting soil.

Mixed up a soil sample for testing. Allowing it to settle now overnight.

Purchased 12qts perlite, 50 markers, and 4 72-bay potting trays from Mariposa Feed for about $31.