It’s been a long winter, can I get an amen on that one? Here
in northern Ohio, winter has felt like an open wound that just wouldn’t heal.
Here it is late April and we’re still seeing snow in the air.
Bleh.
My poor little garden has had an unusually long period of
hibernation this spring. But as I watch the daffodils struggle to show their
beauty I’m reminded that once again, winter doesn’t have the final say. Winter
will eventually be conquered, and whether it likes it or not, will eventually have
to yield to spring, and the life that comes with it.
As the leaf buds appear on the roses I can imagine them
whispering excited words of encouragement to the irises. “You go ahead and be
first again this year. When you’re done glorifying our Creator, it’ll be my
turn. When I’m done, I’ll pass the baton over to the black eyed susans.” I can
just hear the lilies giggling with the flox over the quiet symphony they have
planned for me this season. “She’s going to be so thrilled, I can wait to share
our talents with her!” Ok, I’m a dork. I know. But this is how I amuse myself
as I tiptoe through my tulips.
If you’ve been to my house you know that I’m a bit geeked
out about my garden. For those who haven’t to say It’s sort of obnoxiously huge
would be an understatement. Like who needs grass when you can have hostas big. I’m
willing to own the fact that the amount of time I spend tweaking my garden is
grossly disproportionate to the amount of time the average home owner spends. 2
hours a day, every day for six months sounds about right, give or take.
Before you freak out, I have a good reason. Really, I do. The
garden is my Jesus place. It’s where my soul floods and I pour out my heart to
Jesus in prayer. It’s a gift that I’ve created for my Creator. I pray that every car that drives past and
gets an eyeful of color turns their admiration not towards me, but to the One
who created me, and each of those flowers.
So the next time you drive by my house, please don’t think “wow
that lady has way too much free time on her hands” (which is probably true) or “I
wonder how much time and money that lady spent to make her garden look like
that”. Please take my garden as a reminder of who you are in Christ, and see it
the way I do, as an invitation to worship.
And if you’re local, consider this your invitation to come
and share a glass of lemonade under my mighty hundred year old oak tree when
the roses are in bloom. You won’t be disappointed, I promise…
My garden is currently suffering from an identity crisis.
It thinks it's mid-April, but it isn't. Dude, it's March.
This is what my garden is supposed to look like this time of year... Brown, dead, bleh.
Waiting for the color to come.
This is what it looks like now. Full of cheer and charm.
The daffodils and hyacinths are starting to bloom. The irises, wild geranium, and and lillies are so big it's not even funny. My rosebushes even have leaves on them.
What is the world coming to?
It's craziness I tell you.
And we're loving every moment of it.
I had high hopes for my winter this year. I had visions of knee deep snow mounds ripe for Max to play in - American style. Last year we had a winter full of fun snowy activities and I was pumped to do them again with Max. Our snow activities from last year included snow sculptures, snow paint, snow candy and our annual snow hike. This year didn't get enough snow to do any of those things. Of course.
And now that March is here, we're ready to give up on winter. Not that it's impossible to get clobbered with 8 inches in the next few weeks, but given our winter I'm not holding my breathe. So from here I guess it's time to turn our attention to the garden. While theres still not much to do out there yet, I'm totally psyched to put a shovel in that little dude's hand and see what he's capable of.
Bring it on spring, we're ready for it.
Aside from the big brick party I had going on earlier this summer I've sort of been ignoring my garden. The weeds are more abundant than I'd like to admit, but there's enough good stuff going on out there that they're easy to overlook. Which I do, rather often. I might add. Overlook the weeds.
Our meadow is starting to look more like a proper meadow, and less like we're too lazy to mow our grass. It makes me happy. I'd like it more if my kids would stand in it so I could take their pictures I'd be just this much happier.
I have pumpkins growing out from under my back porch. Annie put a dead pumpkin out there last winter. Now I have a huge pumpkin patch. They'd make me happier if they weren't growing over my flowers.
I have 4 little gourds growing in my seriously overgrown veggie garden (aka meadow). They're so stinking cute.
Someone keeps stealing the blooms off of my sunflowers. I've lost 3 now. I blame the squirrels. I hate squirrels.
So earlier this summer my mother and I played bandits and stole some brick from a construction site. You're shocked, I can tell. Quite the team we were, a sweet Jesus-loving girl like me, and my squeaky clean mother. To be fair it wasn't really stealing, they were strewn amongst the rubble waiting to be hauled off, so really they were just trash.
And we rescued them.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
We didn't steal them, we rescued them.
And I put them to good use. Check it out. The flower bed at the west end of my house had yet to see any sort of edger/divider to separate it from the lawn and it looked rather pathetic.
before
Well six weeks and 100 bricks later, it looks rather dapper if I do say so myself.
Over the weekend I was Walking around in my garden. After I noticed all the tiny buds and other treasures my garden had to show me I stopped to listen to what my garden had to say to me. I have to admit, my plants make me chuckle. I have dill growing in random places (that I'm quite sure I didn't plant) which is surely the result of the epic dill seed fight my kids had with their brother Max last summer. Oh Max and his dill. I have never met someone who could plop themselves in the garden and pick dill and eat it like candy. Now that I've been to Russia I understand the relationship. Next year there will be a large section of dill in the garden, just for him. On a completely unrelated note, I also had a little conversation with my black eyed susans... the ones who are literally taking over each garden I put them in. It went something like this: You are not allowed to take over this garden too. You can have that one over there, but not this one. Really. You can't. I have no where to transplant you, and none of my friends want you. So just stop growing. I'm not kidding. If you don't watch it you're going to end up on the compost pile. Am I the only one who talks to her plants? Probably not. I'm just the only one who records the conversation for other people to read.
Let me just preface this post by saying that we live in a swamp where nothing ever burns. The few times I've tried to set brush fires, it's taken forever to burn even the slightest portion of the pile. So one day last week I decided to take advantage of the drier than usual weather and see if I couldn't burn a little more off that pile that's been collecting for several years now. About 2 minutes into the burn I decided it was going well enough that perhaps I did need a way to put the flames down just in case... by the time I called the kids to bring out a few buckets and the hose not only had the entire 6 foot wide pile gone up in a puff, but also 10 feet of surrounding underbrush had gone up with it. Eek. Fortunately we managed to get everything under control before it got too wild and scary. Nothing we cared about got burned, infact the wildflowers and raspberries and all of our grass that were growing inches from the front edge of the flames survived the heat just fine. The kids even had a great time playing fireman.
So if you take a tour of my garden, please excuse the 10 x 10 black scar of charred wood and blackened soil that is rather noticable, even if it is tucked into the back corner...
And while your at it, please do not tell the local fire department (or my dad!) about our little mishap. If they knew, they would surely give me a really hard time for not having the water handy before I started the blaze. The last thing I need is to have my fire safety merrit badge taken away.
Moment by moment our garden changes. As I stroll past the beds, I pause and wonder... when did those open up? When did that pop out of the ground? Holy smokes we're going to have a lot of (fill in the blank) this year.
As the craziness of summer is just beginning, and the amount of time I have to pay attention to the garden dwindles, I take a moment to pause. Not to take in the abundance of weeds (that I'm not bothering to pluck), but to take in the treasures that today has to share with me. Tomorrow I might not have a few seconds to be thrilled over each tiny new development my garden has for me, but today I do. Today I can mourn over the passing from the season of abundant lillies to the season of roses. Today I can be thrilled over those tiny buds that developed over night on my choreopsis.
We've had a healthy dose of sunshine this week, and our garden is responding nicely. Everywhere I look I have new growth and sweet surprises. The apple trees are blooming, and so is my wild geranium. The irises are starting to reveal their buds, and the dill volunteers from last years garden are plentiful.
We are working on getting the seeds into the ground. The cosmos, zinnias, oregano, and chives are all in. Hopefully I'll get to the tomatoes, onions, and delphinium in before too much longer. The pumpkins can wait until all those are in. Last week I managed to plant 20 trees, most of them were lilacs, but it seems like there was something else mixed in with them... (hopefully my mom will chime in to tell us all what they were, since she's the one who gave them to me...) I planted them all on the "wild" side of my yard where things grow slightly unruly and I'm ok with that. I'm hoping they'll all grow together and make an awesome hedge.
I have one word to describe my garden right now and that would be wet. We've had rain, rain and more rain, which means my plants are happy, but certain parts of my yard have succumbed to the flood. That's what I get for living in a swamp, right? Regardless, I have some new "big picture" shots from the garden so you can see how things are coming along. First we have the front garden. Which actually has stuff growing in it now, and therefore looks more like a garden. Sadly not much is blooming yet, so it's still not that exciting. We've got some daffodils and some grape hyacinths out, but that's about it for our April blooms. So you can compare the growth between this month and last I put my photo from March first
Here's the swell garden, it has lots of new growth, but not a lot of blooming yet... again last months photo is first... And last of all, I have the Rose of Sharon garden. This one is a little bit more wild and unruly, I let more native plants hang out here than I generally tolerate in my other beds, so if it looks a little rougher that's why. That and the mulch that was illegally dumped here a few years back makes it rather difficult to mow. Ahem.
Spring has finally sprung in our neighborhood. It's such a relief after facing the winter that would not end. We have been outside in full force, soaking up every drop of sunlight, delighting in each new shoot of green that claws it's way to the surface.
So here's what's new...
The first round of daffodils have bloomed (I have several varieties that bloom at different times). I swore up and down I wasn't going to cut a collection for the table. I made it to about 9 am on the day after my first blooms opened up before some of my lovelies made their way indoors.
It always amazes me at how quickly things shoot up in the spring. You can practically hear the peonies growing. I swear these things are an inch taller than they were last night.
Last but not least we have our little squills. These little wildflowers were reclaimed from my woods, and now live in my hosta patch. Aren't they cute?
So while there's a good month until the weather improves enough for our community to fully embrace the outdoors, we Petersons are a special kind of crazy. We've been known to go out while there's still snow on the ground to get a jump on the season. In reality when you garden on the scale that we do, there's always something that needs to be done. Not much has changed since I posted the current state of the gardens photos last week, our beds are still pretty dead and brown. But there is much to be done in preparation for another growing season that will be upon us before we know it. I spent most of the day outside yesterday thinking I could knock a few things off the list. Not so much. I think my to do list must be breeding, because it's longer now than it was earlier. Drat.
The done list:
* find a home the handful of daffodil bulbs that had been churned up by the demo project
* divide/relocate the irises that also met the bulldozer (but survived just fine)
All that stuff went into the Rose of Sharon garden I showed you earlier.
* Measure out and make a preliminary fence for the new veggie garden that'll go in that half acre of soil turned up by the demo.
I was originally going to fence off about 3/4s of that area for veggies, but then I came to my senses. Really, I don't need to plant enough food to feed an entire village. I settled on an area about 4x the size of my original garden. If I get all that space filled in, then I'll worry about expanding.
On the list for this week:
* compost/mulch the 3 gardens I showed you in addition to the new veggie bed
* finish purchasing seeds for veggie bed, and figure out a new support system for the peas and tomatoes.
*find homes for the 50ish daffodil bulbs that are randomly scattered around after the demo. (Anybody want some bulbs? Free to a good home!)
I thought this year it might be interesting to take photos of my garden each month to compare the blooms/growth process, and at the end of the gardening season make a little collage. Big dreams right? Well I made it through the first month. The "snow has finally melted but everything is still dead and icky looking" month. So here are photos of my 3 main gardens. We have the Front Garden (not to be confused with the front walk garden)
the swell garden (that was at one point shaped like an ocean swell, but we've since reshaped it)
and the Rose of Sharon garden (not to be confused with the swell garden which also has a Rose of Sharon in it).
I wish I had better names for the garden, but frankly I can't get anything else to stick... If you look really close you can see my inch tall daffodils and irises. Not so pretty right? I know. Come back next month.
We had a few nice days last week where we got all the beds raked out, but the weather got colder again before I could compost/mulch everything, so we have last year's tired mulch all over everything, that coupled with the brown grass makes it hard to see where the garden stops and my grass starts. I know. It'll be easier to see next month...
We do it every year, come March 1st we start scrutinizing our garden for the first signs of spring. It's always interesting to see which set of daffodils will poke their heads out first. Usually it's the ones along our front walk, but this year our first cluster popped up infront of Alex's window.
It's so lovely to see you my little green friends.
As soon as the standing water receeds from the spring thaw, we'll be out with rakes and shovels getting our yard all set up for spring. Oh and that half acre of churned up soil on the annex from the demo project. I got plans for that. Grass need not apply.
As the leaf buds appear on the roses I can imagine them
whispering excited words of encouragement to the irises. “You go ahead and be
first again this year. When you’re done glorifying our Creator, it’ll be my
turn. When I’m done, I’ll pass the baton over to the black eyed susans.” I can
just hear the lilies giggling with the flox over the quiet symphony they have
planned for me this season. “She’s going to be so thrilled, I can wait to share
our talents with her!” Ok, I’m a dork. I know. But this is how I amuse myself
as I tiptoe through my tulips. 
I had high hopes for my winter this year. I had visions of knee deep snow mounds ripe for Max to play in - American style. Last year we had a winter full of fun snowy activities and I was pumped to do them again with Max. Our snow activities from last year included snow sculptures, snow paint, snow candy and our annual snow hike. This year didn't get enough snow to do any of those things. Of course. 
before 
What is that white stuff all over my garden? 
the swell garden (that was at one point shaped like an ocean swell, but we've since reshaped it)
