Just Add Water

Yesterday was a miserable, rainy day. Normally on such a day I would stay curled up on the couch with my computer or a good book. Instead I had to work so I bundled up and headed out early. I was in quite a miserable mood due to the weather and the fact that it was a Saturday, so I really didn’t pay much attention to my surroundings on the drive in. When I picked up the kids at the High School they were in a great mood, we had some good music on the radio and my mood improved considerably. With very little traffic I started to notice that with the rain it seemed that everything had turned light spring green overnight. We went to Mexico and it seemed that as we got closer to the lake things got even greener.

I’m just itching to plant something but I know we are still going to have some frosty mornings yet. I keep changing my mind as to what to plant where. I’ve decided to put the butterfly garden between the house and the garage where it will be a little more sheltered and I will see it every day as I come and go. I had F cut down the willow finally and we’re going to cut a kidney shaped bed to enclose all of the roots that the lawn mower hates and just sprinkle a wildflower seed mix and hope it looks great.

The grandkids seedlings are all doing well. I’ve planted some more morning glory seeds for the bean pole teepee that we’re going to try. I’ve been reading up on square foot gardening and think that I’ll give that a try for their other seedlings. A 4x4 foot box should be easy to construct and they will then each get 4 squares to plant with whatever they want. Having a few small squares each to weed and water should help to keep them interested. If it works out well we can add more boxes in the future. The question is where to put it? I’d like to put it right at the back corner of the house but I’m worried that the snow and ice coming off of the roof next winter might ruin it. I’ll have to decide in the next couple of weeks.


I had a very pleasant surprise when I took the scraps out to the composter this morning. Back in September 2004 I bought six trillium bulbs on ebay and was quite disappointed last year when they didn’t come up. Three of them are up this year! They grew wild in our backyard when we lived in Liverpool so I’m happy to have them again.


I also have several more foxglove coming up at the edge of the woods and I plan to move half of them out front in a few weeks.









I’m seriously thinking about planting the entire front yard in white clover so that the tree roots and the lawn mower become a non-issue. Has anyone ever seen a lawn planted this way? I have not found a good picture of a yard intentionally planted this way on the web. Should I try it first in smaller bare or weed infested areas first? Will the bees really be a problem? We don’t use the front yard for anything because of the amount of high speed traffic on the road but I would still like it to look attractive.