I am fairly certain that there are 7,342 websites from which you can check the weather for Akron. And I guess I’m proud to say that I’m not one to put a ‘weather widget’ on this blog. Seems kind of hokey. News aside, I like to catch the weather at the Channel 5 (WEWS- ABC) website. It’s different than the others because they do a webcast several times a day specifically for web surfers- and don’t just copy the 6 o’clock news once a day. I’m a sucker for video… Of course, all they say lately is RAIN, but, at least its video.
Anyway, Mark Johnson likes to post to his blog about weather items once in a while, and he published an excellent chart of the various average dates that you can expect the year to be front free. I did take note and gathered the latest frost warning dates for our town below:
The Earliest ‘last frost’ on record for Akron is April 15th.
The Average ‘last frost’ for Akron is May 3rd.
The Latest ‘last frost’ on record for Akron is May 21st.
That means, as of the date of this post, we’re getting close to home free. I think a couple of my plants frosted out the other night, luckily the ones in my new planter were saved because I just popped them out and placed them under the porch the night before.. but I hope that’s the end of it.
Spring time preparations at the AkronOhioMoms house
(ok, its just my house, but it can have a name, no?)
We have a lot to do around the house this Spring and Summer. When we moved here last winter, it was snow covered. When the snow melted, we discovered almost 1 acre of land that had no grass, we seeded it by hand. We also found about 25 dead sassafras trees in our front yard and several larger trees in our back yard. We cut what was potentially dangerous last year. Last weekend, my husband cut down all 20 dead trees in our front yard. Now, we actually have sunlight! I’m so excited.
Riding Lawn Mower from WeedEater (it’s a SmartCut)
Today, we broke out a new riding lawn mower! As you may have seen in pictures of our backyard, and read about over the last year, our backyard is on a hill. This is our first house with an acre, and last year we grew a little weary of managing the lawn mower up and down the embankment. This year our friends at WeedEater have let us try out the brand new-on-the-market SmartCut. We gave it a test-drive today, even though the ground is still quick soggy and were very impressed. It cut our lawn mowing down to a fraction of the time, plus it was way more fun. I’ll fill you in on the details later this week.
A Raised Bed Garden from Backyard Botanicals
A year ago, I was looking through the Backyard Discovery website and saw, aside from the playgrounds, that they have a very cute raised bed garden in their Backyard Botanicals line. As of today (and in a break from the rain!) my hubby Matt is about 1/2 way through putting it together. I am so excited to plant my new vegetable garden once the frost is nothing to worry about.
Further yard plans for 2011
- A zipline
- A tree house
- New Front Gardens
- New Front Door
- Driveway
- Fill in the grass
- New flower gardens in back yard
- Cut up fallen trees in the woods
- Cultivate the wild blackberry bushes till they are monsters
- Yell at the deer after they eat our new flowers and vegetables.
Yes, we do have a lot of plans. The raised garden is actually on sale right now, it is more than plastic pots but is something meant to last a long time. It is an addition to your outdoor living space as well as a super place to plant your garden.
You’ve got a lot of plans on your plate! The raised garden thing looks cool. Had my interest until I saw the price tag…Ill just stick with my cheap, plastic pots.
The zip line is really on our list, we have to research it but it seems like the perfect thing for our yard. Yes, we’ll have a zip line playdate!
Zip line!!?? Hoping we’ve got a standing invitation to come and use it once it’s up! Get goin’ Matt!