Playin' In The Rain

It's too rainy to mow. It's too rainy to work in the garden beds. What's a guy to do who loves to play outside? In this case Ed has gone back to working on the shade garden wall. The wall ends are coming together. This flat area of wall bothers Ed. Somehow when working on this part he drifted back to straight. Straight is Ed's default position! Part of him really wants to take it down and redo it since he was going for curved. I'm so pleased that it will stand. It makes this wall distinctively Ed's




The two ends of the wall have come together. As Ed works on the wall, he uses wet gravel from the gravel bank to fill in the spaces between the stones. It will dry hard, not as hard as concrete of course, but very firm, yet flexible.





He will work on the gap until the top of the wall is level. It might not be perfectly level, but Ed has a great eye, so I bet it will be close. This "back" view of the shade garden shows work yet to be done. Soil and amendments must be added. Weeds need to be removed. One thing we didn't consider was exactly how we will keep this bed weeded. It's wider than either of us can reach when sitting on the wall. Time will work out that small detail. The weather forecast is for more rain, and more rain means more wall.

Frozen Progress

Several warm bright days had encouraged outside work. Gravel could be screened for wall filling and it was possible to weed the garden beds. Birds were everywhere and bees found food in the freshly composted fruit peels. Then the wind shifted, blowing fiercely from the North driving us inside. It was an unwelcome 12 degrees F at wake up this morning. Everything in the garden is frozen solid again. The river is flowing freely, but the water has a thick look to it. Tonight will be clear. The sky will be full of stars. We will be watching from the warmth of the house. The cardinal flower plants will be exposed to the bitter cold. This is the kind of weather that sometimes ends their existence.

Lucky Me !

The weather here today was fantastic. Ed has been working on my shade garden wall all afternoon. I spent my time cleaning up the mint beds. How I miss the smell of fresh mints. Tea made from the dried leaves is lovely, but fresh mint is something very special. Just clearing away the dead plant material filled the air with the aroma. It was the same with the Monarda .

I found two flowers in the garden today. One is a snow drop and the other a rather anemic looking Johnny Jump Up. The first tricolor blackbird appeared today as well. One perhaps not so wonderful development is the return of the flies,but it goes with the territory. You can't expect the insect eating birds to return until the bugs are here.

It was after five when I went out and snapped these pictures. Ed is so focused on building the wall that I don't think he even noticed that I was doing it.

This has been a full sun garden for so long. I'm quite excited at the prospect of having at least a little bit of partial shade to plant. This spot will be sunny fairly late in the spring since it gets its shade from a locust tree. For me and the garden this was a very lucky day and I'm only a tiny bit Irish!