My Favorite Summer Topic: My Garden

Okay, last year I made big deals about my garden. Well, get used to it. It's my true love in the summer. :-) This is the view from my den window as of May 16. The plant with white flowers just barely showing on the right is the aforementioned Bleeding Heart.

The saying is that a garden grows thusly: The first year it weeps, the second year it creeps, the third year it leaps. My garden is now into its seventh year, might even be its eighth, and I'm still waiting for that leaping thing. I do have to give the garden its due, however. The "soil" I started with was basically a large sandbox with a smattering of dirt. Replacing that with my hand-mixed blend ("CarlaDirt"--equal parts topsoil and cow manure with some sphagnum moss) has provided some nourishment and the garden hangs on. I love reading gardening articles that say you need to divide your perennials every three years, usually, because they'll choke themselves otherwise. I've NEVER divided one of mine and actually have added plants to thicken their spread a bit. But like I said, that garden is one hard-working survivalist.

So this is what I look at every morning, first thing. This is the view from my bathroom window. (Both these photos were shot through screens, to explain the grid effect.) The scene changes slowly but enought to interest me every single day. I'll try to put a photo up each month so you can see the progress ... and the color.

This year we're going to add a Burning Bush to the front yard and it will be just visible in this view. It'll be against the property-line chain-link fence that you can't see clearly here but the bush will be in that green space that's visible in the center far-left of this photo. Stay tuned.

And HAPPY SPRING ... at last!