What happened to Spring?

Just the other day i was going around the house opening all the blinds to let as much light in as possible so I could keep the furnace off. Today I had to close all the blinds in order to keep the house cool enough.

We had very little Spring this year and I was too busy for what little there was to have much of a chance to appreciate it. I've only spent two days working in the yard so far this season. But those were two GOOD days.

I don't miss gardening when I don't do it. But when I do I enjoy it so much I begin to wonder why I bother doing anything else! I begin to think I could easily give up all my other pursuits, activities, and hobbies, and do nothing but garden.


I hooked the hose up last week after doing some fertilizing and, as usual, the leaky connection between my hose and my nozzle - which seems to be a continual problem - dribbled down my arm and leaked onto my pants. I don't know if it's because I buy cheap hoses, cheap nozzles, or don't twist them on tight enough, but I always seem to have this problem.

I sighed deeply while the water dribbled, but couldn't have been happier. I thought about how lucky I am to have such a nice yard to work in, in such a nice neighborhood. In spite of leaky hoses and a chilly, rainy, busy Spring, I can't, as they say, complain.

Last bouquets of summer

Picked in my garden yesterday

We have lilacs!

We were very happy to recently discover that two of the bushes in our backyard are lilacs. Until they started to bloom last week we thought they were just big, ugly, overgrown bushes. So, what a surprise. And what a delight!

And look what I found while I was out there with my camera:

what's in bloom here

These dwarf irises, originally from our GR garden,

have survived two moves and seem to be doing just fine.


The primroses have also survived and cheer me immensely.


Don't know what this is. It popped up last weekend. Any ideas?


Here's the dogwood in our backyard. At least I think it's a dogwood. Isn't it?

Spring Bouquet

This is the first bouquet of the year from our new garden. I've never had hyacinths before - how nice they look with the daffodils. Our yard has a lot of potential, but needs a lot of work. I feel the fever coming on to be out there digging in the dirt, but there are too many other priorities right now.

Friday Favorite: GR garden

This is a part of a garden that was mine when we lived in Grand Rapids. During the five years we owned this house I spent a lot of time working in the garden and was very proud of it - we were twice on the local garden tour. It was hard to leave it behind when we sold the house and I still occasionally wonder about how it's doing now.

Gardening was a big part of my life when we lived in that house & I got a lot of pleasure from it. But we don't have much of a garden at our new house and not much hope of one either. There are some nice established plants here and there, and those that I've transplanted seem to have survived the winter, but the soil is heavy clay and the main garden space is in shade.

I'm not as passionate as I once was about gardening, and I was thinking about giving it up all together - Who needs the trouble? But I'm sure I'll end up spending a lot of time in the yard here doing what I can with what I've got.

instead of

Instead of blogging I've been busy doing lots other things, including breaking through the landscaping cloth in my garden. This thick woven plastic is about two inches below the soil and is almost impossible to cut. In order to put my plants in the ground I have to remove the wood chips, remove the topsoil, and then cut away a portion of the cloth, which has been in the garden so long it's now connected to the soil by the roots of the weeds that have somehow managed to grow through it.

I understand that this stuff is meant to be an easy way to keep weeds from growing, but the idea of having a garden you can't dig into seems kinda crazy to me. Earth covered in plastic just doesn't seem right - doesn't seem very "green."