Planting Garlic

It's been raining for past 4 days and for a change it's a very good thing - ground has been overly dry and many lakes in the area much lower than I ever seen them in the past. But once it stopped, we went to work - got about 60 cubic feet (2.5 yards) of manure delivered on Saturday. So we spread them out in our large garden, my hubby tilled it all with old soil and then we raked it all smooth. Very tiring job spreading it all as it's very dense. But the mix came out pretty good. Hopefully it will improve production for next year once we start planting in spring. For now I redirected one of my long beds - 22 feet long, that I usually use for tomatoes and onions, to another use. I planted over 120 cloves of garlic planted, including:

• Inchelium Red, 
• Chesnock Red, 
• German Porcelain, 
• Ozark, 
• Spanish Rojas, 
• Vietnamese Red
• New York White. 

I still have few heads of Music and Spanish Roja to put somewhere but not sure if I want it in  my garden. I might put some into the Community Garden for next spring. And yes, it's a lot of garlic, but my bed really needs a break from nightshade varieties. Maybe I'll add some squash later in June once I pull some of the earlier varieties out.

On not such a happy side, while we were preparing out garden for spring, our neighbor decided she didn't want to see our home from her window so she brought a landscaper with an excavator and planted two huge pine trees - they are expected to grow 40-60 feet tall easily. Right smack in front of our garden on the property line.  Effectively blocking all afternoon sun from my garden. I knew she hated to see my garden from the moment we build it (she never hid that opinion) but never would have thought her to be this hateful. Her ideas of "pretty" is combination of rocks, metal constructions and pines.  Really wish she'd move somewhere to the city where there is plenty of each to satisfy her taste, because clearly anything fresh like fruit trees and pretty flowers are not tolerated by her at all. Pity.