The weather is crazy nice right now, we even had our first Thunderstorm of the year yesterday! Wonderful!
I got home on Friday and noticed that my crocus were coming up, and my tulips, and my hyacinth, and heck ALL of my spring flowers so Sunday I rolled up my sleeves, put on my garden clogs and silly hat and got to work. I purchased 4 bags of garden soil and 8 bags of mulch. With threat of rain and blustery winds I got to work removing debris, dead plants, and other junk from the garden. Then I mixed in three bags of soil into several areas of the garden that needed some improvement. When we first moved in the front green space was hard packed dirt with a high concentration of clay, a lot of weeds, and overgrown bushes. I have spent the last few years adding an edge to keep the lawn out, organic matter, more soil, pruning the bushes and planting a variety of perenial plants and bulbs. The space is a lot nicer than it was and it is fairly self sustaining, which was my goal. I'd still like to add a green space on the side of the house. The grass is mostly weeds there and it would keep the moron with the edge trimmer from taking bits of the siding off the house if there was some distance between it and the grass. (last year he "trimmed" some of my flowers, what a dumb ass)
As I worked through the soil I was pleased to find many happy fat earthworms doing their job and was greeted with a nice rich loam under last years mulch. I do so love the smell of the earth after the snow melts. I got all of the dirt added and most of the mulch laid down before the heavy bursts of rain hit. I was still packing up tools and carrying the unused bags of soil and mulch to the back (which I will be dealing with tonight) in the midst of the downpour so I was fairly well soaked when I came in. I also need to finish raking up the mess I pulled out of the garden and bag it up for the compost. The bushes are much more healthy than they have been and even produce small berries, flowers, and proper colors in the fall now.
Each year I add more perenials or replace perenials that have died so the garden is growing. I think it is the nicest space on the street, but most of my neighbors aren't much for working on their lawns. The birds, bees and butterflys spend a great deal of time enjoying the sun, the water from the bird bath, the feeder and the flowers during the sping and summer. A couple of the neighbor kids stopped to see what I was doing and it was clear that they knew nothing of gardening or growing stuff, but their friend did and he was delightful.
4 comments:
I noticed, too, that the little lilies that I planted last year are starting to pop up their heads and the mint that I thought the rabbits had destroyted is now well established at the back of the bed by the porch. But I do need to get out there and clear out the dead stuff from last year. I took advantage of some of the time when dad was wrestling with plumbing last week to cut down all the old rose canes, at least, so what's left should be pretty straightforward!
I need to work on our yard too, it looks like crap and I'm sick of it, I think I'm going to get me some gardening gloves sometime this week and get at the pricklys in our yard.
I purchased some canvas gloves from menards for 99 cents. They worked great this weekend and yesterday.
Glad to see that someone else was excited about Sunday's thunderstorm. Now that I'm back down here I get to enjoy a real spring instead of hitting the beginning of Moorhead's spring and coming down in time for summer to get going down here. Just hearing about your flowers sounds lovely.
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