working in the yard

Thank you all for your comments and opinions on my last post about my sofa. The majority agreed that I should leave things be until I can shop for a new sofa. I agree. Too much work to change things around. Not worth it.

Yesterday, Sunday, we got a one day reprieve from all the rain and cold temperatures we've been having. It was so wonderful to feel the sun and warmth on our faces once again. We're back to rain again today and looks like we won't see the sun again until Friday. It's bad enough being quarantined for so long, but when you can't even get outside for a walk, it gets pretty darn depressing.

But! Yesterday we took advantage of the beautiful weather and worked on some yard projects. Brian did all the back-breaking work; I dug out weeds, raked, and swept. I normally would've helped a lot more, but I currently have a little medical malady (don't worry, it's nothing serious!) that had me feeling out of sorts. This is our butterfly garden which obviously doesn't have much growing yet. Right now we only have daffodils, sedum and lamb's ear, with appearances being made by phlox, black-eyed susan and columbine. In the summer, it's filled with all those (except the columbine; that fades away), plus bee balm and purple coneflower. We've had this wine bottle border for years, but pulled all the bottles out a couple of weeks ago and scrubbed them with soapy water. Yesterday, Brian "replanted" all the clean wine bottles. Another project on my yard to-do list is power washing that bench to get all the moss off, then painting it.

Brian also laid paver stones along a long garden bed on the north side of our house. We originally had these pavers in the culvert area in front of our house, hoping that someday Brian was going to make some kind of border wall, but it never happened. Besides, our village Public Works department worked on our culverts last week and made them not only more aesthetically pleasing, but functional, too. More on that in another post. 

Looking the other way. You can see that we don't have much growing here. Just some hostas (all of which haven't appeared yet - a monster-sized one appears on the corner every year) and ferns - which are barely poking out of the ground. I'd like to add something for height and interest in this area, but I have no idea what to do. Since this is the north side of our house, it is mostly shade. Might have to use this extra quarantine time to do some gardening research.

 We got our daily walk in this morning before the rain hit. I had to stop and snap this picture of a neighbor's magnolia tree starting to bloom. Isn't it beautiful?

We were going to make a trip to a local, independent garden store today, but then realized that we wouldn't be able to plant anything this week anyway, so why bother. I'd have to keep all the plants on my front porch and even possibly move them into the garage at night, because there's still some nights where it's going down into the 30's.

Have a wonderful week and stay safe!