B.O.B. Bob and I spent Saturday afternoon preparing the yard for the mulch delivery we were anticipating from the Boys Scouts of America. B.O.B. Bob is an Eagle Scout, and loves doing his part to help out; not to mention they deliver the mulch right to our door, which means we don’t have to waste several hours at Home Depot or Lowe’s waiting for someone to finally help us. The Boy Scouts finally showed up at 6:30 in the evening, which meant it was way too late to get anything done, but at least we were prepared for Sunday. (To be completely honest, B.O.B. did way more work than I did on Saturday. I had a crazy migraine all day, and only managed to get outside for an hour or two, which I mostly spent taking down the St. Patrick’s Day decorations, and putting up the Easter ones.)
Unfortunately we woke up to an overcast and very cold day on Sunday morning, which made us both dread having to spend the day outdoors in the yard. So we procrastinated a bit and took a trip to Home Depot to get some flower bulbs, vegetable seeds, and potting soil. After we got home I realized that we needed to go “acquire” some more pinecones to use in the bottom of my flowerpots for drainage. I’ve tried everything over the years to make my pots not only retain water, but also allow the right amount to drain through. Coffee filters with small gravel built up on top worked wonderfully, but the pots were heavy and unmanageable, not to mention that I ended up dumping rocks everywhere when I went to empty the pots in the fall. B.O.B. Bob got very tired of finding rocks in his yard, especially when he was mowing the lawn. Next I tried packing peanuts, which were lightweight, but once again made an ungodly mess in the fall. Pinecones are definitely the way to go. They’re free, as long as you’re not too afraid of walking on to someone else’s property to attain them, and they’re biodegradable. Luckily we have a lot of business parks surrounding us with a mass amount of pine trees.
We did eventually make it to the mulching, but not with much excitement. Luckily, we’ve both developed a system over the years, and can knock out the job in less than three hours. Not a bad time frame for sixty-five large bags of mulch. We still need to buy a few more for the backyard beds, but it seems like it’s always like that. No matter how much mulch we order, it’s never enough.
We’ve spent the last several years trying to remove every flower bulb we can find from our front flowerbeds. They looked wonderful, but we just couldn’t deal with the crazy amount of weeds we ended up pulling each year. We’d wasted countless hours of our life on our knees in that flowerbed, and both of us had decided we just couldn’t take it anymore. Now B.O.B. Bob can go out their with his weed killer and spray to his heart’s content, and not worry about killing off my precious flowers. We did save the bulbs, and have moved them to the back fence line. If they come up, we’re happy to see them, if they don’t, we’re not too upset by it. Some lonely oddball daffodils managed to survive the mass “debulbing” that B.O.B. Bob and I have been doing for the past few years though, and I decided to use them in two huge flower pots on our front porch, and then replant them somewhere else later on.
During our trip to Home Depot in the morning, I picked up a few yellow tulips to plant in some pots on the side porch. Really I’m just yearning to surround myself with flowers because nothing is blooming yet. It’s been such a long and cold winter, and I’m beginning to wonder if some of my favorite plants have even survived. I’m sure these tulips won’t bloom for another couple of weeks, but at least it’s something for me to look forward to.
Peonies – Ranunculus – Gladiolus
The most exciting project of the day was to finally plant a spring and summer flower bulb garden in the flowerbed that we created last year next to the newly extended deck. It’s a very small space that doesn’t require much weeding, if any at all. It sat empty for the better part of last year, and I’ve spent a lot of time trying to decide what I wanted to plant there. Finally I decided to move some of the large rocks in the backyard to create a border, and then fill the bed with gladiolus in the rear, peonies in the middle, and ranunculus in the front. I can’t wait to see the bright colorful flowers pop up later this year. Definitely something to look forward to, and if it doesn’t turn out quite like I plan, I’ll just move the bulbs to the back fence line to keep all of the others company.
Faith, Hope, Love, & Luck
-Colleen
