Clean up in aisle backyard!

Tags

garden, muscles, postaday2014, raking, work

Today has been one of the prettiest days in Blandford that we have had in forever, and my garden was calling me. As you can see in the pictures down below, my garden is a mess. This will take more than just a few hours of work, by golly.

After taking the pictures, I spent a few more hours raking, pulling and cutting, now my muscles are pooped, I am pooped. I love gardening, but to be honest, this cleanup business every year is a drag, it reveals the potential of what is to come, but the payoff is visually tiny. If I took more pictures of the “after”, they would look pretty much like the “before”. We are still in early April, I won’t see any real signs of life until mid May, if memory serves me right, I think. lol

I do feel happy with the work that I did and the clean up, even if it is a work still in progress. I am keeping my fingers crossed that tomorrow won’t find me too stiff and slow with my muscles saying I hate you; gardening muscles are different from walking muscles, my gardening muscles are the ones that will be upset, I think. Hopefully, they will be fine with me. I’ll let you tomorrow.

Shoots have sprung!

Tags

clean up, Gardening, postaday2013, raking, shoots, spring, writing

Today was the first day that I ventured outside to take a look see around the gardens. There wasn’t much to see because up here in Blandford, we haven’t had too many days of temperatures that went much higher than the low forties so I was just happy to see 90% of the snow gone and not much else. Out front I decided to rake out the side bed and the front area to give whatever was waking up from the deep winter slumber, some much needed air and sunlight and lo and behold I found shoots! I had completely forgotten my little spring time surprises.

It isn’t much but just seeing the yellow, purple and violet colors made my day. Seeing new life in my garden made me itch to get out there to do more yard work. I may not be able to for the rest of the week because the weather forecast is not in my favor. According to the experts, we are going to have showers for three days straight. I know that April showers bring May flowers but considering the tsunami amount of snow that has just melted in my entire yard, both front and back, I am pretty sure that my dormant flowers have had their fill of moisture.

Today was a good day.

Leaves, leaves and more leaves

Tags

fall season, foliage, leaves, leaves colours, postaday2012, raking

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One of my least favorite chores, the disposal of fall leaves. I never mind the raking, the exercise is such that I am never cold while I’m raking and it builds a nice little appetite that I like to indulge as a result of my hard work. It is the bagging that really annoys me because for some reason once you pull out a lawn and leaf bag, the winds come out to play and the leaves scatter away while you are battling the rake, the leaves and the bag all at once.

I used to love the piles of leaves in Astoria Park when I was little, I never had to rake them and bag them back in Astoria, I don’t think anyone did. I remember having as an assignment for at least two years, I think in first and second grade, having to find as many different leaves and sticking them on colored paper to bring to school. That was fun, running after the leaves before the wind did its job and swept them away somewhere else. It is when we moved up here to Blandford that I was introduced to the whole raking and bagging leaf thing.

Supposedly the reason behind the disposal of fall leaves is that if you leave the leaves where they are, when the snows come, the carpet of leaves will kill the grass because the grass will have been suffocated by the layering of the leaves and the snow. It makes sense so in a day or two I will start to make some piles and perhaps start the bagging process. We are only in October and we do live in tree country, many trees still have their leaves attached so I don’t know how early I want to start my least favorite chore.