A Beautiful Day With A Sad Goodbye

Today was a beautiful day to be outside in the garden. Moderate temperatures with a slight breeze, blue sky and fluffy white clouds made for a picture perfect gardening day. This Butter and Sugar Siberian Iris new last year had only one blossom this year, but it is spectacular.

There is much to do, weeding, planting mowing. Ed did some of everything. I mostly stuck to weeding. If you stayed near the fragrant Dianthus, you could barely notice the freshly spread manure on the hayfield of the neighboring farm. Maybe it's me, but I think manure smelled better before they started using the lagoon fermentation process.I'm not saying it smelled good, mind you, but better. It still comes with country living as part of the deal.

Today we did the depressing job of digging up the "tulip fire" infected tulip bulbs. We had lilies planted with them, and because they were damaged so severely from the frost, and looked decidedly unwell, we tossed them in the trash along with all the tulip bulbs that Ed could find. Some of the bulbs seemed to be gone. Clouds of small bugs seemed to be congregated under groud in the area of the tulip bulbs. I have no clue what they might be. It was a sad goodbye, but we are glad to have that job finished, Ed threw his gloves in the garbage can with the bulbs, and I wiped down his tools with antiseptic wipes.

Tired and a little sad, we both headed inside for dinner and a little down time. Tomorrow we will be back out there again.