At Last

Spring finally announced its presence with authority this week, and I, for one, couldn't be happier. May is one of my favorite months, when the long, cold fingers of winter have finally loosened their grip, the sky is blue, the sun is bright, the birds are singing, and you can practically hear the buds bursting forth.

May also means a lot of outside work for me--cleaning the driveway of maple flowers, cleaning the gutters of maple flowers, cleaning the driveway (again) of maple flowers, pulling maple seedlings, weeding, digging, fertilizing, trimming, mowing, hauling outdoor stuff out of storage, and did I mention cleaning up after the maple trees?

I've also done several inspection tours of the garden this year, checking for bare spots, looking for what survived this year and what didn't, where things need to be dug up and moved, and so on. As long and cold as the winter was this year, it was a good one for the garden, because all that snow kept things insulated, and we didn't have the thaw-and-freeze cycles that have killed so many plants in years past. I'm always surprised at what makes it through and what doesn't. This year, I had a clump of Italian parsley that somehow survived, and it looks like the cilantro has reseeded itself quite nicely. The Oriental poppies I had left for dead have come back healthy and HUGE. The verbena didn't make it, but that was a long shot. I had given up on the swamp milkweed, but I just noticed yesterday that there are little green shoots starting to poke up.

So, I predict several trips to the garden center over the next couple of weekends to collect mulch, peat moss, new pots to replace ones that broke, and many visits to the plant section to linger over all the choices--do I want to try tomatillos again this year? How many flats of impatiens? Shall I do all white again or go for a mix? Any good tomato varieties? How about herbs? How's the perennial selection? Decisions, decisions...

In other good news, my committee work is almost wrapped up, which means I can start choosing my own reading again. You have no idea how excited I am about this. I have a long, long list of books, books that have waited patiently for me while I slogged through my assigned titles. So many happy hours of reading pleasure to look forward to! I can't wait!

Doggone Blues

Now busking for Milk Bones on a street corner near you: