Tear Down That Wall

So...learn from my mistakes.

I finally decided to break down and buy a proper mason's string for the next tier of the garden project.  I pounded short pieces of rebar in at each back corner, dug my trench, and started running my block. 

Well, lo and behold, my wall is woefully out of whack.  The new wall should be the same number of blocks across as the first wall, but I'm off by about half a block.  I could just finagle it and keep going, but I walked away for about a week and it's been driving me crazy thinking about it.  The other issue is "close enough to level" has rendered a wall that's higher on one end than the other.  I've decided to keep going with the new wall, straight and true, and I'll tear out the first wall and rebuild it so it's level and square.  *sigh*

That's a lot of work down the tubes, but I'd rather have it right than good enough.

In the meantime, the vegetable garden is thriving.  Well, everything except the Tumbling Tom tomato and the Tractor Supply strawberries.  I'll transplant my healthy strawberries into that bed once I've picked the berries; I don't want to disturb them while they're producing.  In the meantime, I'll snip any blossoms that the plants put out so when I do transplant them, they can have a chance to set roots and adjust to their new home before working hard to make fruit.

One of my "black" iris has bloomed.  The other I planted too deep and it just produced leaves, but hopefully I'll be transplanting that into one of the tiered gardens and I'll fix that issue when I do.

Bearded Iris "Here Comes the Night"

And I found this crazy beautiful moth in my barn the other day.  It's a Giant Leopard Moth.  How cool is that?

I've also built another cat yard for the girls, three times the size as last year's.  It's pretty redneck looking (think chicken run with patio furniture), so no pictures of that.  I also set up a very small area for pasture acclimation for the mules.  I've only let them on it once so far, because Flea's had some intermittent lameness issues related to his insulin resistance, but that's a topic for another post.  The vet is due out today, so we'll see if we can get him right for summer and allow for pasture turnout.  Poor mules haven't been out of their paddocks since October 2018, just before I sold the other house. Fingers crossed for good results today!