Shucks... we forgot that today was world naked gardening day

As soon as I awoke I rushed out of the house to pick up two bales of straw.  Actually I couldn't remember if it was straw that I needed or hay (and honestly I wouldn't know the difference or why one is better than the other), I just knew that I needed something to cover newly seeded soil so that the birds wouldn't have a feast.

With straw at the ready, I then finished shoveling the last of the fill dirt that I needed to level a portion of the lawn and moved all the left-over rock and stone to the wall that I had built.  Finally, a clean area that I could start seeding... well almost.  It was at that point that my wife decided that she wanted a new planting bed -- a mere four feet by 100 feet in length.  So OK, my son took the lead on this one and started removing the grass from the area (which, of course, had to go somewhere), so it wound up in the area that I had just cleaned out and leveled.

When the new planting bed was dug out, it was time to go to the store to pick up some starter fertilizer and some grass seed.  While I wanted to get to the store right away, unfortunately the kids needed to be taken out for a day of roller skating which meant that the project had to be delayed a bit... no problem.  There remained enough daylight to at least spread the fertilizer, and I did manage to get a few feet of seed distributed before it got too dark.  So all in all, everyone wound up reasonably satisfied today.  The rest of the seed will be spread tomorrow (even if rains all day).  Meanwhile, some plants are growing nicely in the garden; here are a few pics:

Tulips

Mint (our favorite)