Then in the early evening, we took Ellie to the dog park for an hour, where she had much fun with all the other doggies enjoying the stunning weather, and followed that with a trip to Home Depot, where we bought much heavy stuff. A sort of plastic curving edging for the new dog relief area, with this mesh liner to go inside it, and some stone pavers to hide the plastic, and then three big bags of soil and one of mulch. The tentative plan is to actually have two different areas in the section, one with mulch, and the other with grass and wildflowers, and see how they survive. I've never tried to grow grass before -- we bought a mix of bluegrass and ryegrass seeds -- we'll see how it goes. It looks like we can just sow the grass seed anytime -- maybe today! (If I can talk Kev into lugging the heavy bags of soil up from the car, that is... :-)
Garden question: The Chicago Botanic Garden site says to cover the entire garden with a slow-release fertilizer at this time of year. Okay, so we bought some -- Osmocyte, I think -- that claims it's good for three months. I plan to put it down sometime in the next few days. My question is this -- does that mean once we put it down, we shouldn't use Miracle-Gro or any other fertilizers? Last summer, we fertilized about once a month or so with Miracle-Gro. But I don't want to give the garden too much fertilizer and burn the plants. HELP??
Today is writing and gardening, from now until evening. Evening we're doing a staged reading of A Passage to India, with me leading a Q&A afterwards, so it may be something of a long day. If the weather holds, maybe I'll take a nap in the roof garden this afternoon, among all my bare trees and shrubs and beds of soil, and dream of flowers to come...