First - I have a great house with a great yard in a really good neighborhood. The people in my cul-de-sac are a little bit wacky but for the most part, the people in this neighborhood are pretty nice and fairly normal (for yankees anyway).
Second-We do get to see all 4 seasons here and while I am not so thrilled with the addition of "winter", and the summer is w-a-a-a-y-y-y-y too short; watching everything come back to life in the spring is pretty cool. Back home - everything dies due to heat and lack of rain by August. Here it is the winter that kills it all. But when spring rolls around, everything slowly comes back to life. Living here, I totally get why God has Easter in the Spring. Watching nature burst forth in life after a long, dark, cold winter is a an amazing event. Here is the view of the flowering trees you can see looking down our street.
Last year I planted a bunch of tulip bulbs and we enjoyed all the color in the spring. This year they are back and I think they are even heartier now that they have had more time in the flower beds. This week my first tulip bloomed and several more are just about to.
Then the temps went back to the 30's and 40's so the tulips closed up. Today we made it up to 60 and there were more tulips in bloom. I have several clumps in various beds in the front yard and I can't wait to see them all blooming!
We also took a family trip to Home Depot. David bought some stuff to fix the spot in the front yard where the city did some utility work and we bought plants and seeds for our garden. This year we will attempt to add green beans, broccoli, cucumbers and rosemary. And we'll have the plants we have grown before as well; tomatoes, basil, bell peppers and jalapeno peppers. Another plus to living here is the ability to actually have a vegetable garden. The kids love it and it is pretty cool to use something you grew when preparing a meal. We can't plant the veggies yet as there is actually SNOW in the forecast for Mon, Tues AND Wed but David and the older two did work on the front yard:
(BTW: I told Audrey to go put on scrubby clothes and she comes out in WHITE shorts. Amy sees Audrey changing and then changes OUT of her camo cargo pants and t-shirt and INTO the dressier, black and purple outfit. ***shaking my head, sighing heavily***)
We also did some major transplanting. There has been this shrub by our deck that I have hated since we moved in. It grows really tall and blocks my view of the kids on the swingset. And it is always covered in ants. And it gives me a horrible rash whenever I try to prune it. I tried killing it by cutting it way down right before winter and hoping the cold would get in it and kill it. Apparently that strategy only works in TX. So this year I started trying to dig it out. I got about halfway around it when the winter hit and the ground froze. So now that the ground is thawed I have been after it again. Well today, David got out there and finished the job. THEN - after digging up the "ant bush" he dug up some tall ornamental grass that grew next to it and together we moved the grass into the spot where the ant bush had been. Yea! It's brown and cut short from winter but it will be green and about 3-4 feet tall once summer comes. (that is if our transplanting didn't kill it ....) There are two clumps of it but only one is really showing up in the pic.
I also transplanted another clump of shorter ornamental grass to a smaller bed and now we have a huge empty bed to use for our vegetable garden. I am hoping to get the edge a little more evened out now that I have removed the shrub and rearranged things. (This was before I moved the shorter ornamental grass. You can barely see it in the shadows at the far end of the deck.)
Transplanting the clump on my own was quite the site and I am thankful I was in the back yard. I was able to dig it up with no problems but then could lift it into the wagon to move it to the other bed. SO I ended up rolling it all the way across the edge of this bed and then across a small cement patio, until I was able to dump it in it's new spot. I am sure I looked oh-so-lovely doing this.
And then, because I am glutton for pain - I also went after one of our evergreens that died. It suffered too much trauma in the wind storm back in September. So I cut it down today and bundled the boughs with twine and set them at the curb. (yet another plus to living here - the garbage collection company takes ANYTHING you set out. No need to cut it to a specific size or use bio-degradable twine. Just cut it down to a somewhat manageable size and set it out and they will take it!) Now of course I didn't have the energy to cut the tree all the way down and I wasn't about to dig out the stump but at least you can't see the dead branches anymore.
1 comment:
I'm also getting frustrated about not being able to plant anything yet. I know it was sometime in April last year that I did it, but there were a few nights that I had to cover my garden box because of fear of frost. It was so cool to get lettuce from the garden for most of the summer though! I can't wait to do it again!
Pretty tulips!
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