Other than the travesty of our coffee maker breaking, the week has been off to a pretty good start.

Warning—this blog was written entirely without coffee.

Even though it was not a perfectly sunny weekend, it was warm enough to garden, and I got a lot done. I planted almost all the plants I bought last fall and I only have one rose left from last spring’s order that I still need to plant. I’m scoping out a new spot–that means I’ll have to get another rose to plant where I thought I would plant this one.  You can never enough roses!

It’s good not to have planting last spring’s plant purchases hanging over my head.

For some reason, I finally worked up the nerve to start using the Rose Pro method of fertilizing, what appears to be a complicated series of odd things you have to hunt down at nurseries and drug stores to pour on your roses each month—urea, potash and Milogranite—just a few of the things in my future.  This week, I put Epson Salts and Super Phosphate on half of them today (the half that didn’t get the Ada Perry’s Magic Formula—I just love that name and won’t stop using it!).

Now I have an experiment going. We will see what works better. I can’t put the Ada Perry’s with Bone Meal on my roses where the dogs will eat it so it goes on the plants outside the wall. The puppy took a lick of the Epson Salts but I stopped her right away and most of my roses are fenced off (for this reason and the because of the chickens) with that low green wire fence.

I put my first chicken poop compost on a few of my plants too. Hoping that doesn’t burn, but it sat for six months and looked like real compost you’d buy in a store (Ha ha) and the dogs don’t want to eat it because it doesn’t smell like chicken poop anymore—just a guess…

I planted rosemary and horsetail reeds in my chicken garden. I need to buy more to fill out the space because they look nice and the chickens aren’t eating them. Rosemary chicken is a new joke around here.

I planted two azaleas because I have acid soil and they are supposed to like that. We planted artichokes, tomatoes, delphiniums, blue berries, onions and Iceland poppies, which I had to fight over with little sister who wanted them all for her fairy garden. She is envious of big sister’s fabulous fairy garden but hers is just as good…

Boy, I’m so random. That’s a problem with liking plants and not having enough coffee.

My husband bought a Raticator. You should hear Henrietta squawk when she sees a rat. It sounds she is being strangled. I heard chickens can stop laying eggs when the rats come so it should make Henrietta happy to have a new rat trap to save her.

Anyway, here’s stuff I don’t want to forget to buy:

More Bill Wallis geraniums—they are looking great.

More Peruvian lily

Rosa Rugosa alba

Ferns for fern grotto—new idea for under elm tree

Coral bells

Remember to consider weeping willows because Tacoma Stands look terrible and may need replacing

One new Zuni Crape Myrtle tree

Cat mint to plant under roses

New lemon (dwarf)

Plant eggplant this year

Okay that’s enough! It will probably take me a year to plant all that.

If I had a decent cup of coffee, I would probably make more sense. The French press is our salvation and our curse–it’s a slow process for a small cup of coffee. Today I heard my husband talking to my father about how to make cowboy coffee or boiled coffee, his lifetime specialty.  We have to do something while we wait for our new coffee maker to come in the mail. Here is his try at cowboy coffee.