Gardening on Earth Day

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Disclaimer: I’m participating in Hey, Let’s Grow!, a home gardening program sponsored by Monsanto, which provided me with a seed starter kit, Seminis Home Garden seeds, and a gift card for additional gardening supplies. All opinions, along with gardening skills or lack thereof, are my own.

Today, Earth Day, was the perfect day to get outside and work in my garden! A few weeks ago I was very eager to plant my seeds, and they grew quite well. So well, in fact, that they are ready to plant outside now even though we still have a chance of frost in our area. So the tomatoes  and peppers will have to stay inside for just a little longer, but I planted the frost-hardy spinach and lettuce today.

These little guys are growing and need to get outside!

I planted both seedlings and seeds in my raised garden bed. The seedlings were growing right by my patio door, which I have been opening every day to let the fresh air in. I hope that was enough to “harden” the plants and make them accustomed to the cool spring weather!

Green Beret spinach

I’m also risking the chance of frost and planted two bean plants and a cucumber plant. They are already flowering! Along with frost, I worry about the two little rabbits I’ve seen running around my yard, so Ed found some garden netting for me to use to protect my baby plants. If all grows well, we–not the rabbits–will be eating fresh lettuce and spinach pretty soon!

Can you see the netting by my cucumber plant?

I’m planning on planting my other plants outside by Mother’s Day. Read my first #HeyLetsGrow post here: Winter Outside, Spring Inside. Happy Earth Day!

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Problems with Garage Doors

Sometimes problems are pretty obvious. Like when there’s water all over the laundry room floor, I can figure out pretty easily that our sump pump hose has frozen and I need to thaw it out and reattach the hose to the sump pump. That happened twice to me this winter!

However, when our electric garage door wouldn’t close and both Ed and I cleared all the debris that could be blocking the way, such as the leftover leaves and cobwebs from last fall and the little red snow shovels the girls use in the winter, and the door STILL wouldn’t close, the problem wasn’t so obvious.

As I was standing outside, staring at the garage door sensors and wondering why the door wouldn’t close, I noticed that the setting sun was reflecting off of the sensor lens. I moved so that I was blocking the sun from shining on the sensor and yelled at Ed to try closing the garage door again.

And guess what? THE DOOR CLOSED!

That solution was so easy, and yet so unexpected. Ed and I didn’t expect it to work, and yet it did.

April showers!

Strangely enough, this past Sunday we were up at my father-in-law’s place, trying to get it ready to sell. His garage door has always been a little wonky, and this time…we couldn’t get it to close after numerous tries. The light was blinking furiously and the door kept going up and down like it was possessed. I cleaned the lens for the door sensors and Ed tried to make sure they were lined up. There was no sunshine at all! In fact, we were getting rained on as all of this was happening. Finally, we had to detach the garage door from the electric opener and close it manually. Fortunately, I suppose, no one is living there at the moment so it’s not a big hassle. But now we have to get it fixed. *sigh*

Rainy Day

Garage door problems. I guess it could be worse! What problems have you been solving lately?

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