boy will I be relieved when the mood turns from brown to green.

I believe this would have been a species tulip.(I hope I’m wrong). I’m 87% it was the rabbits that got hungry and gnawed this beaut down to its base. I also saw holes dug into my pots that were housing my decorative tulip bulbs over winter. The pots were in the garage, so the rabbits really be doing that crafty bullshit.

revisiting the first garden bed I made a week or two ago. This is by far the easiest method of creating.a new bed. Simply put down cardboard, soak it in water, top it with mulch. Wait at least a couple of months to begin planting. Grass should be dead/dying at that point. This a “no dig” method-ISH (google ‘no-dig’ to learn about the amazing carbon-capturing abilities of our beloved top-soil.

Galentine’s Day with my main gal. While she quality-controls the newest garden bed, I try to picture the planting scheme. This is my personal heaven.

the before photo. man i can’t wait for sunset colored runner beans to adorn these.

iced strawberries. these leaves don’t quit their pink hued magnificence. Can’t wait for their berries to follow suit.

more leaves in ice. yearning to break fee.

good morning to the east yard.

Thyme is a study in quiet resilience. One might expect them to die away over winter with the other Mediterranean herbs. But come weeks of snow and negative temps, they act like nothing happened. No complaints, no drama. They just sit there, ready to start growing again.

I sometimes pretend that I’m midwest Monty Don. Like here, I planted bulbs among the grass. More like Monty Wrong though, because, again, I forgot what I planted. i thiiiiiiink these are some sort of daffodil. Could also be Camassia. But prolly a daffodil. But Monty would say “Narcissus” because he is a class act.

okay a bit bigger move today than yesterday’s seed planting. i present: a brand new bed. It lives under trees and gets part sun, so it shoooouulld be considered a “woodland edge” habitat. I’ll be plopping in some lace-cap hydrangeas, ferns, astrantia, good king henry, wild bergamot, lovage, foxgloves, and few others. Idk what’s going to work, so i’m trying out a few. Most of these will be grown from seed. May the force be with us

success! first seeds of the year have been planted. the wee child “helped me.” these will be verbana hastata, a beautiful, spiky, purple perennial. in mimicry of nature, we started them in the cold. imagine being a seed dropped in the fall, you snuggle up under a bed of leaves, and fall asleep. Shits cold out, but there’s no need to wake up yet. your resting self is building up energy reserves. after all, you’ll need it when. you wake up and are expected to start flowering. but that’s not till that indefinable spring warmth in the air, the cue to wake up. the fancy word for this whole process is “vernalization.”

hotsy totsy red! zinging shit up. she doesn’t even know how powerful she is.

skirts of frozen foxglove. the tag said this was a perennial fox glove. as they’re typically bienniel, i’ll be pleasantly surprise if that’s true. if she survives the subzero temps, she’ll show us.

i was digging around the leaves today looking for new shoots snd found this. It was just sitting there between the soil and leaves. A seed must have been dropped by some critter and begun establishing itself. I can’t wait to see what these fuzzy leaves turn out to be. no wee greenlings were harmed in the production of this photo, this was gently placed back where I found it.

life seems so much more possible than it did back in january. a whole day ago. and yet the wee echinacea seem to huddle and conspire.

feckin baby hands. keep exploring, you pudgy dimpled things!

another episode of “but did she live?” my sweet species tulip from the january 5 post….well she hasn’t shriveled and decayed. and plants do be resilient AF. but she’s also looking a little pale at the tips. she also looks taller! but we’re also still in january. we’re rooting for you queen!! oh damn. that was punintentional

apparently i’m a sucker for a good reflection of a tree in water.

Mother Nature coming through again. I totally forgot what these are but they were not deterred by the frost and the rabbits seemed disgusted by them. Will keep watch and report back on their name, title, inheritance, etc. That, or I’ll stop watching Julian Fellowes productions and simply report their name.