Hi, everyone. How did your weekend WSing go?

My DH and I are familiar with gardening but are starting fresh with two new garden projects this year. One is a property in the mountains which has terrible erosion, weeds, gravel, and only about 7 hours of sun in the center of the yard. The other is a 130 ft. deep, very narrow city garden which is terraced along the length with square, gray quarry stones. It has very tall trees with ivy along the highest edge. We've hauled away a lot of trash and branches so far, straightened up the antique wire fence line, and are putting up rolled bamboo to screen off the view of the parking lot next week.

Saturday we took 3 bales of straw to each of the properties with plans to use it to suppress weeds under cardboard until new plants can take hold. I've been saving cardboard for about a year for this season. Ordering soil next week.

I love the smell of straw, and the color was a gorgeous gold in our silver and brown mountain landscape. Took me awhile to sweep all the straw out of the van later! the pic doesn't show the lovely gold glowing color it was today!

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Then a trip to Home Depot, where I tried not to laugh at a cute couple arguing about whether or not dad could control his impulse to buy tools. He looked very heartbroken when I stole a glance, that the wife was forbidding him to buy more tools. She was shouting that she'd much rather he concentrate on getting rid of the mice in their house!

Luckily there's no one to yell at me not to buy tools. Here are a few new ones I got Saturday.

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Left to right,

- An awl to punch drainage holes (too much trouble firing up the soldering iron for just a few containers)

- some snips to cut containers (because DH says I am ruining the kitchen scissors)

- a file to sharpen the garden tools

- and a cool pen that also has a flashlight and a laser pointer. Okay, that's not exactly a garden tool, but I could not find an ordinary pen at the WalMart! So I got this gadget-y one instead. It's a lousy pen, by the way, but a good flashlight.

Here's a color wheel that shows the colors we are aiming for, for the city terrace garden. I'm a illustrator/designer in my occupation so I tend to plan things like mad. I have found this trait has helped me make some really nice gardens in the past, and I hope it works again.

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I found the palette courtesy of the Chelsea Garden Show last year. If you've never seen photos from that garden show, I urge you to look it up this year. Oh my goodness, it's a beautiful show every year (even on-line).

Here's 4 new mushroom boxes I made tonight. Seed courtesy of Burpees from the Home Depot. I mixed an equal amount of seeds into each container, using the same color palette (I really love blues and violets, yellow greens and pale yellow):

- purple rock cress (Aubretia)

- Texas bluebonnet lupines

- and blue flax. We plan to use these four containers on a steep, dry stretch of driveway that follows the front edge of our crescent moon shaped mountain lot, the base of which will be Fleur de Lawn no-mow meadow grass.

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These mushroom boxes hold 3 cups of soil and are 2.5" high. I put these in milk jug bottoms and pressed the cut top of the jug over them. This made for a sort of short mini-greenhouse that has to be carried with 2 hands, BUT if I can get used to this design, it should take up less room in storage over the summer.

Question: Do any of you put mixed seeds into a single container?

Newbie, Tansy