Conditioning Day #1

April 20, 2013
Still haven't hit 60 degrees this year, and it was snowing just yesterday.  BUT today dawned sunny if not warm.  Time to condition the bales!  I looked out at them before breakfast today, and saw I had a furry little helper (just hope he doesn't plan to live here...)

Scott had all the bales moved by the time I got back from the "Y".  We decided to keep them right on the patio.  The biggest reason is they'll be right outside our door, so it will be much easier to tend to and water the plants.  Another reason is that if they're in the grass, gophers can tunnel up under and into them, and it also puts them a little further from the deer

.  We may regret this if they fall apart and make a mess all over the patio, but hey, live and learn! 

We read our directions from the book, spread a 1/2 cup of fertilizer on each bale (20-0-4 lawn fertilizer), then watered them thoroughly with rain water (it's supposed to be warm, we had to break a thin cover of ice in the bucket--but Layla enjoyed the fresh ice water!).  So the conditioning process begins.

Scott also brought up a water softener tank to be our new rain barrel. Is it possible we could be planting in 2 weeks?  I'm afraid we're going to skip spring this year and jump to the 90's :(