Fingers in the Dirt

IT'S FINALLY SPRING!!!

(Can you tell I'm excited? Because I really really am!)

Spring has finally sprung here in the great white north of Wisconsin. The snow is melted and gone and little green things are finding their way through the dirt. And my fingers are finding their way into the dirt!

I spent yesterday raking out the flower beds in front of the house and raking along the edge of the fence. Ruby helped me load up the leaves in the wagon and take them to the compost pile. Then I started raking around the edge of the rock garden. But I couldn't finish that because the pile of wood chips we took to the garden last year was still spilling out into the yard. They had never gotten raked into the garden like we wanted. So Teagan raked them out over the garden. A few of the rocks on one side had gotten moved last year (to dump out the wood chips) and never got put back in place. Well, we started moving rocks, and pretty soon we had almost doubled the size of our little garden! It's amazing, but when we rearranged the rocks, we had enough for a much bigger circle! We raked up the piles of leaves from last year's raking (which were mostly decomposed) and put that in the new garden area. Then we spread out the wood chips over that. We will add some more something to the new area of the garden, but we've got a good start so far!

Today I went out to re-consider some lilies that grew around the edge of the garden. They were beautiful, sure, but I got tired of pulling lilies out of the eggplants. I dug up all I could, about 40 little lily shoots, plus as much of the root system as I could get. Those things are tenacious! We worked up a little dirt on the edge of the woods and threw them in there. I didn't go through a lot of trouble for them. From what I've heard they will grow anywhere. I lightly spread dirt over them and threw leaves on top. If they grow great, if not, oh well.

All in all, I am growing to love my yard & garden. I love going out there and digging around in the dirt. It's very satisfying.