This blog is, at its heart, just a personal diary. It picks up from the written garden notes I took for years, in the big green book that my mother bought me when my husband and I moved to our first home and we started our first garden.
So today I have license to ramble! And to switch topics on a dime!
I know I’ve said April is the busiest month, but May is pretty much there with it. There’s so much to do. And I can be a bit impatient. Like, when I can see the end game, but other plans — like the business of life, other work we’re doing, budgets or simply time — slow things down, it feels like swimming through molasses.
But there really is so much to see and appreciate, from later blooming bulbs to the first flowers on many perennials. In year 2, one May task is seeing how what we had planted last year is doing in the space we planted it. There have been a few relocations, like moving some golden huchera to a more shady spot, and the maidenhair ferns to a new back “fern slope” (more on that soon). And dealing with transitions from planned garden to the wilder landscape.
It is my tendency to think of what’s left vs. what I have accomplished. My husband always reminds me of how much I’ve done and to appreciate the progress. Some days the ideas and the routine to-do lists seem longer than the day has hours.
I should note that we had two brush piles removed last week, which will greatly enhance the ability to realize the final vision. That was the last of the rotting, unsightly piles we needed to deal with. It is a BIG item off our to-do list!
I’m making adjustments to my plans, because the front woodlands were to have been one of this year’s project. But a home improvement project involving running a gas line through the woodland has now materialized. So the woodland restoration is on hold, and I’m relocating some native plants I had ordered.
Vision. Adjustment. Serendipity. Everything has worked out, so far.
Today I’ll share a few photos from the garden, year 2. The redbud was here when we arrived, but the rest was us and they’re mostly doing okay. And perhaps even better than okay.
Jacob’s Ladder near our back door 
Ostrich fern on our back slope. 
Redbud behind the house 
Siberian iris ‘Caeser’s Brother.’ Behind it, a flowering viburnum.
