My garden is coming along, yesterday I moved some dirt out of the path areas (between beveled raised beds, there aren't any boards to define them) and put down layers of newspaper covered with cypress mulch. I'll mulch over the beds themselves with hay. Penny, if we couldn't use hoses I'd be on a perpetual bucket brigade with the size of this yard. And it reminds me, it's time to use a bucket to catch gray water in the kitchen and pour it into the garden. We've had rain, but there is no guarantee that it will continue (though some is predicted late in the week.)

Kat, I bought some very tall shepherds crooks at a garden center near here a couple of years ago, and got them half price because one of them had some rust on the bottom and had obviously been there a while. Those are for bird feeders in winter, and all sorts of stuff the rest of the year. And at a garage sale I found 8 or 10 shorter ones for $10 each, they're about 4' long and I use them in the garden. I put a tomato cage around each new plant and in a proactive way to support them I put one of these crooks through the upper ring of the cage to help support the whole thing. When I had the garage sale last fall I had several people spot these in the garden and ask if I'd sell them. They're one of the handiest things in the garden. I have an old spade fork that I never got rid of - it's missing a tine, but I use it like a crook in the garden, again, to support things as they grow.

I'm using hay this year - I'm determined to keep some moisture in the soil and I think hay worked better than some of the other mulches I've used. I am also thinking about some kind of sun cloth to keep the garden intact if we have the kind of heat we had. I'd have to build a canopy over the top in places, but that may be what it takes.

Kat, how is the pooch doing? Are you closer to a name?

SRS