Sunday, April 28, 2013

The Garden

The garden is taking shape.  I have close to 40 separate plots with paths winding around between them. So far seven have been cleared. I hope to be done with the rest by May 15, but it is difficult.  I have arthritic knees. I have a little bench Gary bought for me that I can easily move from place to place and lean over with hand spade and rake. I fill a wheelbarrow but I can't quite manage dumping it into Gary's trailer so he does that for me. When the trailer is filled we take it to the dump.

I began planting season with pansies, which are tough little blossoms that will keep right on blooming when temperatures drop below freezing.  They are always the first planting. I put them in pots in the path leading to the Moons. Tomorrow I'll plant sweet peas

Plants are on sale at ShopKo through Wednesday which works well because Wednesday is also Senior Citizen Day with a 15 percent discount plus I have a $5 coupon. That makes gardening affordable.

As I worked today, I looked around the flower beds and dreamed of what was to come. Shoots promised irises, peonies, daisies, daffodils, tulips, and so much more. Already blooming:  crocuses, puschkinia, pasque flower and dwarf irises.  Sadly, the snowdrops are fading.

At the height of the summer, the flowers will be three feet tall and more and that is hide and seek time.

I read in The Last Child in the Woods that children no longer have secret places, but here they do. The children next door begin to come around the fence as soon as the foliage is high enough, chasing down the paths, hiding in the gazebo, and having conversations that are amusing for someone on her knees weeding, unseen.

I don't have a perfect lawn and sometimes those flower beds get weedy, especially when I go off on a tour. Last year, the drought made the flowers scraggly.  But always there are the children running down the paths, just being kids, and that makes the hard work I am doing now worth it.


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