Spring...

 

I didn't keep close track of online weather maps this week, but I'm thinking most of the Midwest saw spring storms on Wednesday.  High temperatures here made for instability in the weather when the winds finally blew in the rain. Tornadoes were sighted all around the Indianapolis area, and south of us, but on our little spot on the map we woke up yesterday morning to a freshly washed landscape and hardly any tree debris on the ground.

Bradford Pear blossoms

While the forecast predicts a welcomed cool down though most of next week, it is undeniably spring here.  White-blossomed Bradford Pear (which is, I'm sad to say, an invasive at this point) now dot the landscape along the highways.  Sprinkled amongst them are redbud trees, and all kinds of other trees just beginning to leaf out.  

Everything here is growing fast! Sedum, daylilies, irises, clematis, daffodils, forsythia, garlic, onions...  

Sedum, last week🠝 and today🠟

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Daylilies a week ago🠝 and today🠟

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Iris growth a week ago🠝

Irises today🠟

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This Clematis will soon be looking gorgeous.

Forsythia's bloom is about finished, though.

As are the daffodils, I suspect.

Garlic planted in the fall is looking good!

And walking onions planted from the 

bulbils of last year's onions are thriving.

And it looks like we'll have peaches again this year!

Once this rain is over (early next week) I plan to uncover the strawberry plants and take stock of that situation.  I am eager to see if my thinning them out last autumn will have an impact on their production and strawberry size in a couple of months.

I'm not quite ready to throw myself into spring's outdoor work, but hopefully that's just inertia tugging at me to be lazy.  I still have time to think about it. With all the rain we've had, it will take a while for the soil to dry enough to work it, anyway.

Meanwhile, with more consistently warmer temps, I've set myself up again in the sunroom to stitch on my never-ending cross stitch sampler.  It's a great front-row seat for the annual spring show accompanied by birdsong.

Spring...

The weather has been telling us it's spring for the last month, but the calendar assures me it doesn't actually arrive until next Tuesday, the 19th.  I seem to remember not that long ago spring would appear on the calendar weeks before the weather would concede to its arrival.  The last few years it seems just the opposite.  We feel the tease of coming spring weeks (this year, more than a month) before the calendar confirms it.

All sorts of plants have been growing for the last few weeks, but today I finally snapped some pictures.  When I started taking these pictures two years ago, I didn't realize what a nice record it would prove to be.  

For example, in this post on April 22nd, two years ago, I can see that today's asparagus patch is producing a whole month earlier.  Even with last year's early spring, we didn't eat asparagus until the middle of April.

On Monday of this week, there were just a few small spears:

By Friday, this had happened:

I didn't get a picture of the whole patch, just the spot where there were a number of spears growing.   Our nights are supposed to dip below 30 a couple of nights this weekend.  If that doesn't ruin these spears, I think we'll be eating asparagus come Monday!

In the same vein, my various plant pictures are probably more for my record than for your enjoyment, but humor me as I post what's growing here.

Irises

Daylilies

Clematis

Egyptian Walking Onions

I remember, the first spring we were here, I was going to dig up these walking onions and do away with them.  I am so glad I didn't.  They provide entertainment all summer long as they produce new bulbils on the top of their green stalks and then fall over and those bulbils eventually produce new plants.  We've given away a bunch of these plants the last two summers.  I think I'm going to be a little stingy and let these replenish this year.

Somehow, I missed until this spring that this is a forsythia bush.  

Forsythia blooms make my heart happy.

And these Daffodils bloomed on Wednesday.  

Yes, I was watching that closely.  

They're not pictured, but I noticed that the sedum was growing in February.  And this week, the Bradford Pears and I think a Maple tree are budding out.    

For weeks, we've been serenaded by birds from early morning to evening time. It's nice to be treated to green growing things now too.  While our winter has been nothing to complain about, and even when I don't quite feel ready for it to warm up, spring always feels like a gift.  

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The blossoms have already appeared in the land;

The time has arrived for pruning the vines,

And the voice of the turtledove has been heard in our land.

~ Song of Solomon 2:12

A fine autumn day...

Just popping in for a super quick moment to make it known that I am here, and am visiting blogs as I feel up to it, but the fatigue I barely mentioned in my last post has hit me profoundly for the last week and a half.  I think it is improving at this point (little-by-little, day-by-day), but I have been knocked down much harder after the fourth chemo infusion than from any of the previous three before.    I think it's made worse because I simply didn't expect this since I regained my energy about half-way through my previous rounds.  Giving into the need to rest for an extra week and a half was not part of my plan.  I had things to do!   Adjusting my expectations was not something I had on the docket at this point.

That said, and discouraging as it has been, I don't really think it's anything to be worried about, but rather is likely a normal, cumulative effect of several chemo rounds.   

But today was a good day.  Middle son has come for a visit, and it was great to spend some time outside on our last warmish day this month, me doing the little bit I felt up to.   Son is taking down a rogue mulberry tree for us.   I don't have a clue why it was ever allowed to keep growing right in the midst of these shrubs - from the size of the base of the trunk, I'd guess for at least 20 years.

Then we enjoyed a fire.  One of many in the upcoming weeks, no doubt.

The strawberry patch needs to be prepped for winter, but I'm going to put that off until after a few freezing nights next week.  The last two years, I've covered the strawberry plants before the first hard freeze, but I've recently seen online that it's good to harden them off first.  Let them experience a few freezing nights.  Since my energy level wasn't capable of tackling the strawberries this past week, and next week promises freezing temperatures for three nights, I've decided I'm okay with giving this "hardening off" idea a try.  

The asparagus is ready to be cut down now that it's turned yellow, and the seedpods are a cheery red color.  We've got some leaves that have been hanging out, composting for over a year now, so hopefully they've pretty much turned to leaf mold and it's all ready to cover the asparagus patch with.  I'm already looking forward to next April when the first shoots of asparagus should appear. 

With my waning mojo, my handcrafts have largely taken a back seat, again, but a few days ago when I had some extra energy, I decided to look through my yarn hoard stash, and I was motivated to start a simple blanket.  It does me good to keep my hands busy, and while I've had to rip back more times than I care to admit (to correct careless mistakes), the stitch pattern is easy enough that my tired brain can handle it.  

Do you see the honeycomb pattern?   The pattern is called Sweet As Can Bee.  The link goes to Ravelry, and will only open to the pattern for Ravelry members.  

And that's all I've got for the moment.  Thank you for stopping by!

Progress...

I want to start with a huge thank you to all of you who left such beautiful comments on my last post.  I was overwelmed by your kindness and lovely words.  I appreciate you all so much.  I didn't even think to ask for your prayers when I was writing, so I was touched that you pray-ers just volunteered for the job.  You are the best!   

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In April I shared some pictures of a large weedy bed on the south side of our house.   I dubbed it the "bed of doom".   Working over Memorial weekend we got that bed whipped into shape, and also brought mulch around to the front of the house.    

Also this spring we tilled and planted to grass a compacted and bare space under a tree in front of our house.  It's not exactly lush with grass, but it does look a bit better.   Hopefully, with a little more tending and prodding, we can persuade grass to keep filling in.  

And lastly, a year ago, I trimmed some Knockout Rose bushes in a bed on the north side of the house, but I decided after all that work I just wasn't a fan of these rose bushes with a gazillion tiny thorns.  It only took one pruning job to convince me I don't need these in my life.  Greg was happy when I said I didn't want them, as that meant we could dig them up (we gave them to friends who wanted them), and he could plant the area to grass and have a simpler mowing job.  And if I want a rose fix, I can just look out a side window and enjoy my neighbor's gorgeous Knockout Roses he has trellised up the whole side of his house.  He is a pro at these roses.  I don't need to be.  

While it didn't seem so obvious to us when we first bought this house in the fall of 2021, after moving in, the outside upkeep became apparent.  We decided early on that one of our goals would be simplifying the landscaping.  It's been a multi-step process of first removing what was just too much, and now this spring neatening those areas up.  We will, undoubtedly add new plantings in the future, but they will be easy care perennials and not too many.  A future buyer can't be unhappy about that.  If someone in the future wants to plant their hearts out, we will be leaving them a cleaner slate than what we started with. 

There's more to do, but we are enjoying the property more and more with each finished project.  Below are progress pictures of these different spots.  I even power washed the gutters on the back of the house last weekend.  It feels good as I head into surgery soon that these things are done.  It will be nice to spend some time outside on pretty days relaxing and enjoying the cleaner landscaping while I'm healing up.  

So... here's the progression:

Knocking out the Knockout Roses:

Fixing the front:

A Do-over for the Bed of Doom:

Youngest son, Ben, was a great help for most of a day that Memorial weekend.

And that, dear reader, is it for today.  I'll be back sometime after my surgery this week.  

I hope you have a beautiful day!

Outdoor spring work...

Spring is looking beautiful around here.  Our meal last night was accompanied by our first asparagus of the year - came in 10 days earlier than it did last year.

Based on this spring and last year's experience, right as the Bradford Pear trees blossom, it seems we can expect the asparagus patch to start to come to life.  And now that that's happened, I suddenly feel like I'm playing catch-up on spring.  How can I feel behind on spring when it's not even the middle of April?     

While feeling unwelcomed and needlessly self-imposed pressure, I have given myself a talking to and have assured myself that if everything I want to do doesn't happen this spring, it's okay.  I'm going to just pace myself and focus on manageable projects. 

So don't anyone get confused.  This post is not about challenging myself.  I don't need any extra challenges right now.  This post is simply a first documentation of what I hope will be happening around here over the next month or so.  

What I'd like to focus on first is a large area that is in serious need of landscaping.  

On the south side of our house is this really large, what I've dubbed, "bed of despair":

When we bought the house in the fall of 2021, this bed was way overgrown and needed work, but I have to say it looked a lot better then than it does now simply because it was green and filled with life.   Nevermind that the overgrowth hid some unwelcome things...  like stacked bricks, and torn and deteriorating black plastic.  And weeds!  Most of what is seen in these pictures that is green is weeds. 

Sometime last year Greg began clearing out the unwanted overgrowth, and accidentally torched some desirable (to me, anyway) plants when he was attempting to kill weeds then.  I didn't have it in me last summer to overly care about any of it, but at the moment I've risen to the level of finally being bothered by it, so I'm starting to apply myself to tackling it (with Greg's help, of course).  Just before taking these pictures I treated the weeds around the perimeter of the house and detached garage with weed killer.  Next (probably next week) will be removing the dead stuff, the deteriorating plastic weed barrier, and maybe tilling the whole area before beginning to bring this area back to life. 

We've talked about planting a large portion of this bed to grass, sprinkling in some shrubs, and perennials.  The problem with that idea is that grass needs to be mowed - every week, sometimes twice a week in the spring and fall. And if we plant some perennials in there along with grass, weed-wacking would probably also need to happen.  It didn't take long for all of that to sound like just  way too much trouble.  

Another thing I considered was to plant some of this area with garden vegetables.  But then I realized that long before it would be time to trim it all back for winter it would just become a different kind of eyesore than it is now.  And next spring the space will pretty much look like this again.  

In the end, I'm concluding that we just need to pray that some of the bushes come back (or plant some new ones), and with some strategically placed perennials and some fresh mulch, maybe this spot can actually look pretty.  

A good place to start is looking at what we have to work with. 

Phlox.  I've never been successful growing phlox before, and since some is already established here, I have hopes that if I plant some more, it may do very well in this bed. Or maybe if given some decent soil, the phlox that is here will spread.  

On the back side of that evergreen shrub (above) you can see that it's half dead.  So, while it makes me sad, the shrub needs to go.  Not sure how thick are the roots, and how difficult it might be to plant something in that spot, but first things first.  We're planning on having a rogue mulberry tree in the back yard cut down soon.  We can probably also hire the tree cutters to grind the roots of this shrub after we cut it down. 

Other positives?  Above and below one can see some nice big rocks placed kind of randomly in this bed (and there are even more that didn't make it into the picture).   I'm thinking of planting some bulbs or even daylilies and sedum, maybe even phlox amongst the rocks - that ought to add some nice layered visual interest.  The phlox, I'd probably need to plant next spring, but I can transplant daylilies and sedum from other spots around the house as soon as I'm ready to. 

The bricks above, on the other hand, need to go.  Their presence is a mystery, and while we're not exactly looking forward to moving them, taking the job slowly, we can surely put them somewhere other than here for now and figure out their potentiality later.

And lastly, in this bed, toward the back of the house there are some good sized shrubs starting to leaf out, and some beautiful pampas grass that is just starting to grow again.  We shared some pampas grass recently with friends, but hopefully what's left will be showy again this summer and fall.  I do love the pampas grass.  If it wasn't such a bear to divide, I'd consider relocating some of that elsewhere in this bed.  Actually, I am considering it.  The question is, can we find the help we'll need to cut into it and divide it.  This pampas grass grows huge.  It can hide a multitude of things and boy, are there things on this side of the house that could benefit from being hid! 

That's it for now.   While there are other places outside around the house that need work, if this large area can be made to look better this spring and summer, I think it will give us a real boost.  Our goal has been to improve and simplify the landscaping here.  Last year was all about removing the ugly and half dying.  This year begins the rebuild of a simpler, cleaner landscaping around the house.  Easy care perennials and mulch will go a long way toward that end.  I have experience with shrubs like boxwood, forsythia, burning bush, hydrangea...  and perennials like peonies, tiger lilies, daylilies, tulips and daffodils, and now iris and sedum.  I'm curious to learn about perennials you enjoy where you live.

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