today's project

The gardens were sadly neglected while we were away. I came back to lots of weeds and many dead plants. We're not getting much rain. The front garden, which is the first one I planted, has also become overgrown and messy. I didn't know the plants were going to need more room as they get older! Here's how it's been looking:
The yarrow has taken over, and not in a pretty way. It's all sprawly, and messy, and I just don't like it anymore. It's crowding the liatris, which has just about given up:
So I spent a couple of hours rearranging things. Lots of stuff came out: the yarrow, a couple of ornamental alliums, two pretty but prickly thistles, and many weeds.
Better.

ode to my lawn mower

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways:

1. My lawn mower simplifies my life. I don't have to get it tuned up, sharpened, or stored over the winter. As soon as the grass needs it, there it is, sitting in my garage, ready to go.

2. It saves me money. See above, plus it doesn't need gas or oil.

3. It's durable. Five years, no repairs or adjustments.

4. It keeps me in shape. It's work, but my lawn is relatively small, so it's not so much work that I can't do it in an hour or two.

5. It's green, like so many other things that I also love.

a banner day

Friends, today the gardening bucket came out. Little and I share a love of plants and sunlight and green things growing that Big One just doesn't comprehend. Little and I trimmed and carried dead stuff to the compost. We made room for small things trying to poke their way up through dead leaves and mulch. We basked in the sunlight and counted freckles. No small task.

Today at Big's French teacher's house, we met five new Tunis lambs, dark brown and tiny. We watched and waited, hoping the last ewe might give birth right there, right then.

Today it is 60 degrees, on the shady side of my house. Today we walked to Big One's music lesson. There are buds popping on the trees, everywhere and every color... purple and red, gray green and chartreuse.

And today, for the first time, my sisyphean editing project began to feel possible. I have developed a modicum of efficiency. I am learning to move on when there's a nut I can't crack, and keep going through the material. I am more than half way done.

I feel I need to explain something: I am not actually doing any editing. If I were actually honing prose, or even rewriting, I would be having fun. I really love playing with words. In fact, what I am doing is fact checking. And I will spare you the details, but these facts that I'm checking? Let's just say that it would be hard to find less interesting material. So I am finding myself spending inefficient hours learning things I just don't want to know.

But today? Today even that's okay, and today it seems like I will eventually learn to integrate this work into the rest of my life, and put it in the back seat where it belongs.

the de rigeur 'spring is coming' post, and a truly brilliant dinner plan

All over the mama-blogosphere are images of flowers coming up. Mine are well behind most, because it's cold here, but my post has the added benefit of letting you feel good about your own gardening. You will see exactly how much of a slovenly gardener I was last fall, and how very much I have to do before spring gets going in earnest. The beds are a mess, but the bulbs are coming up anyway. Above are the daffodils.
Here are the tulips.
Irises.
Hyacinths.
Phlox, which seemed not to stop growing through the winter. Is this common? If it is, I'm going to be planting a lot of it. It's done very well here, in one of the hottest, dryest parts of my garden.
Crocuses.
And here is my dinner, prepared for me by my friend Sandy Davenport (go have a look, she's also over there in the sidebar) because I am so swamped this week. It's a shepherd's pie, with half white potato and half sweet potato, and it's in the oven right now. Amazing. Thank you.

And that's the good news. The bad news is that between a French lesson, a glorious spinning session, a recorder lesson, and a quick visit from my parents who have just returned from Hawaii, I got not a speck of that editing project done today. Which means that after dinner is eaten, books are read, and the kids are tucked in, I'm going to be tapping away at this here keyboard, until way past my bedtime.

The last gardening day for a while

We're leaving for a two-week trip to Hawaii in five days. I've been working outside quite a bit. We got lots of gardening done today, a little knitting as well. The gardens are growing right along.
This is the vegetable garden. Corn, beans, and squash in the foreground, various salad greens in the background.
Here's the herb garden, to the left of the vegetable garden.
Rhubarb, parsley, strawberries, and a glimpse of the dahlia and black-eyed susan.

A better view of the dahlias and black-eyed Susans.
The petunias, now in full bloom.
Here's how the front looks. Think of it as a work in progress. The yarrow will stand up in time, the butterfly bush will multiply, the monarda and the liatrus will bloom.
Here's the front on the other side of the stairs. The monarda is really blooming over here, and the California poppies are just starting.
The hostas, newly mulched.
The shade garden. We have this lovely bed, next to the garage. It is very shady, very very shady, because of a giant Norway maple at the very back of the backyard. We used to try to grow flowers and vegetables here, before we took a look around and figured out what the real deal is back here. This looks magical to me.
Here's a closer view.
And here are close-ups of some plants that are flowering, mostly in the full-sun front.


If anyone knows what this last little flower is, I'd love to hear. It was a volunteer in our garden this year, and I'd like to encourage it.

gardening!

We spent last weekend outside, working in the garden, and got a lot of new plants in the ground. These projects look more 'in-progress' than most, of course, because they're plants, and they have to grow. With that in mind, meet the latest in a series of new living things around our house.

This is a challenging area, growing things-wise. It is shaded by our car port, and crowded by my neighbor's chain link fence, and the grass doesn't grow so well here. So I dug out the grass and (mostly) dandelions, and planted vinca, which should spread and fill in pretty quickly. I got five plants to fill in this area about six feet long, and they are already starting to spread a bit. I wonder if it will spread into my neighbor's yard? And if it will be hard for her to control? It's an experiment.

Here's an unwitting experiment. Did you ever try to keep plants alive through the winter in the compost heap? We did. My neighbor down the street dug out all his overgrown and rather elderly hostas, and put them out on the curb for the yard waste guys to take. But I got there first, thinking I would plant them. Except I didn't, and then they started to rot, and then it got too cold for me be interested in planting things anymore, so we tossed them in the compost bin and chalked it up to experience. This spring, they were growing and thriving in the compost, so we pulled them out again, and planted them this time. In the photo, you can see where they ivy that used to grow in this spot has taken the paint off our foundation. Gotta get to repairing that paint, but probably not this summer.

The hostas look a little scrawny now, but they'll grow. Hostas do really well here.


I know this because here's what the hostas I rescued from my friend's deer-infested garden last summer look like now. Last summer they were bitten down to nothing, but we put the roots in the ground and they have thrived. I particularly like the blue green ones. They look great, but I don't know what they're called.

Hostas seem pretty much invincible. And I like how they look, and they like shade, and I have lots and lots of shade. All of which makes them the perfect garden plant. So far I have three varieties.

I also love petunias, just love them. They are the one annual I am willing to spend money on. Our house was owned by the same lady for sixty years before we bought it, and she also liked petunias. She planted them along the south side of her house, and they came back every year. Must have been an old variety that reseeded itself really well. Last summer I supplemented the petunia bed with manure, and put in a few additional plants from the garden store, and they went crazy, just an amazing display of flowers along the side of the house. And then I mulched them, and I think that did them in. Not a single one came back this spring, very sad. So I got a bunch of plants from the garden store this year, and put them in last weekend. Here they are, looking not very exciting yet.

Yes, I know, that's an iris, not a petunia. The petunias are at the base, not yet blooming. I told you it wasn't very exciting yet.

We also planted bee balm (monarda) and lavender, and in spite of the heat last weekend, they did fairly well in the transplanting process. The monarda is looking better now, after a lot of rain.


This is in the area to the right of our front steps, where there used to be a giant overgrown shrub of some kind. Apparently the previous owners also grew rocks here. We took the shrubs down with a chain saw shortly after moving in, and dug the stumps out laboriously over the next two years. We're going to continue to live with the rocks for now. I've been hesitant to do a lot of planting here before the porch is complete, but I think I can step around a few plants as I sand and prime and paint.

In other news, I finished my sweater and have worn it several times.

I'm pleased with it. I did not intend for the sleeves to be bell shaped, but I really like it, and I'm working out another design that uses that element as well. The stitch count is exactly the same from the cuff to the sleeve, the belling is accomplished with the combination of knits and purls only.

And, very exciting indeed, Joe/Shellacboy put together another section of the porch. Now it's my turn to sand, prime, and paint, but not today. It's raining, so I'm knitting and reading. But here's a picture of the progress on the porch.