Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Spring Flowers



Spring is really here now. It's been raining a lot more than it usually does for Utah springs (it seems like there's not much of a transition between winter and summer here). I've started feeding birds every day, and I like hearing them outside my window every morning. My flower bed is starting to fill in, too. I've got grape hyacinth, tulips, and pink hyacinth in a color I'd never seen before- it's not the normal pastel pink, but almost magenta.

This week I planted irises and day lillies in a bed in the side of the yard. It took an hour and a half to clear all the old leaves and wandering grass from a 3 x 6 foot area, and I got a sunburn, but it looks really nice. Only twelve more feet to go...

Got a good compost pile started about a month ago, and it's already looking really good. I threw in the old sawdust log from the shiitake mushrooms, and I'm hoping that there's some leftover mycelium that will help everything decompose.

As for the rest of my gardening: a lot will be planted when it stops raining long enough for us to get outside and plant. We have swiss chard, peas, sweet peas, and lettuce (we're going to try from seeds because the starts we planted last weekend didn't seem to take the transplant well). I've also started a bunch indoors so they'll be ready to go outside at the end of may, when we're sure to have warm enough nights. We're looking forward to yellow squash, zucchini, eggplant, chives, thai and sweet basil, and a dozen or more kinds of flowers.

3 comments:

  1. This post just made me feel...I don't know, homesick. It makes me miss the gardens at the house I grew up in. I miss the excitement of planting a garden and fruit trees and everything. The granddaughter of a plant pathologist and a botanist, I was brought up appreciating plants and gardens. I can't wait till I have my own yard.

    I love the smell of hyacinths. And irises are one of my favorite flowers. I just love spring so much.

    Lovely post.

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  2. Thank you, Heather! I'm glad you liked it.

    Something I miss about living with my mom is finding scraps of paper all around the house where she'd drawn diagrams of the garden she was envisioning.

    I used to make a deal with my parents that I would do all inside cleaning if it meant I didn't have to do the half hour of family gardening time on summer evenings. It's weird remembering that, when now I weed for fun.

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  3. My grandma maps out her whole garden on poster paper. And I think it's drawn to scale.

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