Preparing Planting Beds

The weather has been very warm in our area and I’m eager to start planting in the garden. I spoke to several gardeners and they are waiting because the ground is still too cold.  The last several years I planted my garden after Easter, and I think I will wait again this year. The cucumbers are getting so big and ready to go outside, they might not be able to wait until then.

I prepared the planting bed over the weekend. The dirt is hard and clay like in some area and hoping that by digging a big planting hole this will help.

This planting bed below is for the tomato plants. I’ll fill the holes with the store bought garden dirt. This is my first year trying it this way, the garden is sloped and if filled the planting bed with soft garden dirt the rains will wash it away.

This planting bed will be for the pickling cucumbers and snap peas. The trellis is made out of metal fence panels zip ties together to make an A-Frame. It’s staked down by the tent stakes, and I laid black garden cloth in the center to prevent the weed from growing.

Bo helped me moved some of the railroad-lumbers to line up against the fence. I hope this will help to prevent the rains from washing all the garden dirt to the pond. At first I was going to plant the sunflowers in this area, but now I think it’ll be best to plant the Okras here. I wish the whole garden has this rich dark soil like the lower part of the garden.

I sowed the marigolds in a pot and it’s doing well so far.

The zinnias sprout also. 

The blueberries are flowering.

I will be busy weeding this year.

It has been raining today and I couldn’t work in the garden, so I finally have time to thin out the seedlings.

The plastic cups come in handy for transplanting the young plants. I saw on youtube that they use 2 cups, the inside has holes for drainage and the outer layer is to catch the water. It’s such a neat idea and I absolutely loved it.

My dad gave me big empty water bottles, and I use them to plant the young tomato plants. I hope they’ll be ready to go outside in 2 weeks.

31st Anniversary Celebration of Wat Greensboro Buddhist Center

We celebrated the 31st Anniversary Celebration of Wat Greensboro Buddhist Center in Greensboro, North Carolina last Sunday, March 19, 2017.  Back in the 80s, we had a very small Buddhist community in this area. We fled from our war-torn countries, some immigrated from Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos. The Thai community was small in the 80s. We couldn’t speak each other’s languages but what we have in common is the belief of the Buddhist teachings. The original founders rented a house for 2 years, then purchased this place 31 years ago. We are fortunate to have Ven. Phramaha Somsak Sambimb as the temple abbot that fluently speaks Khmer, Thai and English. Wat  Greensboro welcomes members, visitors, and educators that seek to practice and learn more about the Buddhist teachings.

We have generous members that donated to the temple building fund. We recently had a new roof installed last year, a new carport for the holiday events’ vendors installed this year, the paving is a work in progress.

We have completed the men and women’s bathrooms project on January 1, 2017.

We have volunteers that help make these projects possible and also help cleaning up the temple ground on the weekends. The temple sits on a 10 arcs lot and during the clean up the crew members found an old Spirit house that has been hidden from view of the overgrown bamboo trees. We are thankful for all the work that they have done for the temple and their dedications to make Wat Greensboro great again.

The 31st Anniversary service was held in the Buddha’s room.

Alms-giving

The foods prepared for the monks.

Money offering to the temple and monks.

Ven. Phramaha Somsak Sambimb giving the sermon.

Pouring water merit making ceremony.

Offering foods to the monks.

We have young dancers practicing for the upcoming Songkran event in April, looking forward to seeing them perform.

Thank you for your interest in reading this post.

It feels Like Springtime

It’s Spring and I’m like most gardeners that want to start planting in my garden. I know it’s too early in our area, we still have some cold nights and the last frost could be as late as the last week of April.

My seedlings are growing, I re-pot the young cucumber plants in bigger containers and they are big now and ready to go outside but they’ll have to wait until next month. It looks like I might have to do indoor trellises for them.

I’m thinking about re-potting the tomatoes also.

The peppers have decent size containers, the plastic cups are great for sowing seeds indoor.

Bell peppers

I work in the garden when I have time, normally it’s after work during the weekdays and a few hours on the weekend. I still have a lot of cleaning to do and preparing a few more planting beds for the indoor young plants. I have some railroad lumbers and they are heavy, not sure what I will do with them yet.

I moved the mint to the raised bed, hopefully the loose soil will be better for them.

This is the Asian variety and I got it from my sister’s garden.

The blueberry plants survived the winter, I’m looking to add a few more plants.

I have 4 persimmon trees and they all look healthy.

It’s budding and I hope to get a few persimmon fruits this year.

This is my second year gardening here, and it’s very different from gardening in the city with a small plot of land. You could hear everything that’s going on around you, whether it be your neighbors mowing the lawns, next door neighbor on my right watching the Western movie or next door neighbor on my left came out to chit chat with me and all I want to do was to work in my garden.  Living in the country has its advantages, I live closer to nature and only hear sounds of nature while gardening. I do have to say that the chickens and ducks make some noises but they don’t bother me at all.

We have over a dozen newly hatched chicks and they are in the basement under a heating lamp to keep them warm.

It’ll be a few weeks before they could go outside.

This little chick hatched today and was sleeping. I’m glad we have many chicks, some were incubator hatched which took about 21 days, and we have a few newly hatched from the broody hen and Muscovy duck. Bo has both sitting on the eggs right now and once the chicks hatched, he has to bring them inside otherwise the duck will step on them. So far one chick died because he didn’t get to it right away and the duck stepped on it. They are so cute when they are this little.