Gardening stories (and moments 239-252)

Every time I go off of coffee, because I am pregnant, or because I think I'm going to have a heart attack and I haven't figured out it's my allergy pills yet, or because I'm not sleeping well, or just because I need to prove to myself that I can, it is so horrible that I swear I wont ever touch the stuff again.

But then every time I get back on the coffee addiction train my productivity goes up so much that I swear I will never put the stuff down again.

And I suppose that is as good an explanation as any as to why I spent a little under 5 hours on Sunday in the backyard, digging, moving large rocks, and otherwise chipping away at our spring
to-do list.
I got out the coffee press last week.

But of course that is not the whole story.

It fails to take into account that it was 50+ degrees out there. In February. In the frigid north, that is the kind of weather that cant be ignored. That is the kind of weather only caused by weather angels and I was duly elated.

It also fails to take into account the sight of crocus buds breaking thru the winter and dirt. The first hope of Spring, that season that we each of us know comes every year but all the same almost doubt will arrive.

And so I got out a shovel and tilled the garden after church while the boys napped.
And then I gathered up the fallen sticks and raked up the leaf mulch I had spread around the bushes and over the bulbs to hep protect them thru the winter, carefully scooping it away from the crocus buds.

And then as the man and boys of my family joined me, one by one, I attacked this area:
This out-of-the-way corner has never been that high on the to-do list in past years as it was just
overgrown with ivy and rogue grass. It wasn't necessarily ugly and so shaded besides that I wasn't sure what it would be fit for. Anyways we had quite a to-do list; evil rosebushes with 3 inch thorns to dig up, neglected shrubs to prune and nurse to health, a vegetable garden to plant, and weeds...oh the number of weeds I pulled that first summer!

But Sunday, filled with the excess energy of 3 cups of coffee and the sight of new growth in the yard, Sunday I decided to finally do something about that corner. And lo and behold after some pulling and digging and all-around sweating, underneath all that dirt and ivy were paving stones. I've been dreaming of a rock garden for a few years now. Since here, in fact, and I'm beginning to think this is a perfect place, and this a perfect year for each of us to take a stone upon our shoulder and build a memorial of thanks.
The best part is I wont have to fight the ivy when it tries to grow back. Which it will as the
neighbors planted it right on the other side of the chain link fence. I'll just train it to grow
around our rocks.

There are many annoyances to moving into a new house, and therefor a new yard. It takes time, and work, to make it your own. But I think I will be sad when these little surprises have run themselves out. The morning Josh looked out the window and said, "Well, it seems we have tulips." The day our crazy unidentifiable bush flowered bright red blooms which later fruited what looked like (but definitely weren't) pears. We are entering into our 3rd year in this house soon and I can't help but think I have discovered all its secrets.

Digging up that old pathway of paving stones may very well be the last.

Or at least the second to last. We still don't know what in the world that bush is.

And that is my rather long explaination of #252.

Always counting...

#239 Bright blue January skies.

#240 Sun salutations.

#241 Husband-editors.

#242 Little boys goading eachother to greater and greater silliness across the dinner table.

#243 Really big plans, and the graphs to represent them.

#244 Playing outside again- almost every day.

#245 The book of common prayer.

#246 New baby cows.

#247 The freshest possible milk.

#248 The sound of scales dutifully practiced coming up the stairs in the morning.

#249 Phone calls, just to talk.

#250 Coffee.

#251 The first growth of the year.

#252 Spring Discoveries.