stereoman's Blog

Suddenly, there are masses of plants popping up everywhere! Flowers bursting all over the yard, perennials smothered in buds, potatoes popping up without warning, onions leaping forth, an avalanche of carrot babies, a flood of alstroemerias . . . an explosion of new growth! Spring has definitely, absolutely, irrevocably sprung.

I've turned all of my beds now, and found them teeming with earthworms -- fat, slimy, intensely happy earthworms. There weren't any earthworms like those in the back when I started gardening here four years ago, just an occasional, or even less than occasional, little puny squirmy angry red worm. For me, the whole point of nourishing the soil is feeding the earthworms. Everything I put in the soil is for them to eat.

I turned the middle bed in the back today. After I'd pulled up all the horsemint and creasy greens, I found three volunteer potatoes, and carefully raked around them, then laid some mulch. A volunteer is a gift from Mother Earth, and should not be squandered. I don't buy seed potatoes, don't have to. I always get plenty of volunteers. Thanks be!

My Beloved Partner is so excited about the lilacs! At last, they are going to bloom. She's waited a long, long time for this. First, she had to get a husband who could "husband" them. Twenty years it took just for that. From there, a mere three years to see these first big fat clusters of pink flower buds on her very own lilac bush.

This year I have officially dubbed "the year of the carrots". I intend to grow mountains of carrots, myriad carrots, magnificent carrots, marvelous tasty crunchy juicy carrots. And they're off to a great start! Just look at this patch, dense with perky little carrot babies.

Twenty pounds right there. Gar-on-teed. By August, at least. I can almost smell that carrot juice!

Next week I will most definitely have to trim the boxwoods, but today I was not in the mood. Instead, I wanted to work on my sculptured plants. My large Rose of Sharon, next to the front porch, I am training to form an arch over the porch entrance. My junipers, at the end of the walk, I am training to form an arch over the walkway. Once I thought I'd have an arbor there, but Beloved didn't favor that idea. In the end, I'm glad I didn't have to uproot those junipers. They are very well established.

Eve
ry year I find a prize in the junipers. This year is no exception. Nestled in a cozy, well-protected nook, surrounded by, beneath, and over a tangle of branches and needles, a perfect little robin's nest with three perfect little robin's eggs in it.

Beloved and The Boy have just gone off to the movie store. It looks like the rest of my evening is about to be occupied.

A day in the garden is a happy day!