Day 5 Evening Gardening

Wednesday evening was surprisingly productive in the garden considering that I was home late from work and didn't step out into the yard until seven.  It was warm, not windy, not raining....ahhh.  So I started with just a little ambition, I started a fire in the stick burner and sat down with my coffee. I have a garden purse for things that need to stay out of the dirt, camera, blackberry, matches, and....a box of licorice.

So I was there enjoying my coffee and desert and then I decided to do just one thing....I have to sneak up on myself.  I tilled the west side of the hosta bed and then I put the preen down.  Am going to be gone to Chicago this weekend and I know it's going to rain again so I wanted that Preen before the weeds get started.

Greg came out and decided to get the mower battery charged for me.  Grass will be tall when I get back from Chicago. Our mower is going into it's eleventh season of hard labor...looks a bit worse for the wear and admittedly the neglect. Not that Cadilac that Lei rides for sure.  My retirement dream is a big Zero Turn Radius mower with a cup holder and a cushy seat.  I've officially moved into the cushy seat phase of life, leather and heated is my preference.  Some days I get off this mower and have to stand still there for a minute or two waiting for my body to be ready to walk. It takes about two and a half hours to mow the yard and some days I power up and don't quit till its done, then pay for it when I climb down from the mower.

After putting the charger on the mower, Greg decided to work on the blackberry trellis...said something about fruity canes and flora canes and ... I just pick the berries, he makes the jam.  Mostly our berries are wild, but we are moving toward more cultivated trellis in order to be able to pick more easily and mowing back the wild spots where the berries are grow in the edge of the "un-mowable."

The chickens like those un-mowable spots in the yard, they get the protection of the brush and they do love those berries. We get purple chicken poops for the month of May. They've been busy working on the bugs this month. With any luck they will knock out the Japanese beetle grubs. Those bugs wrecked my Hollyhocks last year which is why I am relocating them with seed this year. Don't let me forget I've got to do that next week! Still haven't decided quite where they should go. Half the problem is trying to figure out where they would be least likely be disturbed by landscaping and construction plans.

The light of the sunset through the woodlot made these seed pods seem other-worldly. I remembered the year I had been in the hospital most of the month of April and Dad brought me up a twig of the chestnut tree that was just leafing out. It looked like a little palm tree. I had been in the hospital so long that everything seemed new. Spring is like that.