Now the rains have called it quits for the time being and things have had a chance to dry out, I’m back in the garden evaluating and wrapping up the first phase of my ShapeUp. All but two of the items on my list have been ticked off.  Hopefully I can get to them today.

It’s been a lot of hard work and time, but I’m so glad I made that list and stuck to it, with only a few deviations. There are fewer embarrassing and inexplicable areas in my garden and yard and I feel ready to finish planting the spring garden.

Speaking of embarrassing and inexplicable:

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I walked by this for months. It was a project-in-progress, right? Only there was no progress. I was going to connect the gutter to the shed and let the rainwater run down a downspout into the garbage can/rainbarrel. But I couldn’t get the gutter on the shed by myself and I gave up rather than go to the trouble of asking for someone very tall to help me. Even though I am surrounded by tall people.

Or if only there were devices that allowed a person to become temporarily taller?

The boxes are not part of the project. They are just there. So is the luffa. And the log. The backwards question-mark-shaped root may be making its own personal editorial statement.

IMG_7347This “after” still needs some explaining. I’ll devote a separate post to it soon. I’m making a new garden area by letting the chickens do it for me. There is scare tape and there are lots of leaves here for that purpose.

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And this was leftover fall maintenance that never got done.

You’re supposed to look at dead canna leaves all winter, right?

They deepen your yearning for the renewal of spring and echo the desolation of the winter heart.

Said no one ever.

Desolation banished, new cannas emerging:

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And this is right beside the door everyone uses all day long. It should look more presentable. With fewer hula hoops.

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Better now, but eventually (how often do I use that word?) I want to tear out the nandinas and holly and plant herbs.

In case you haven’t noticed, a major theme of this ShapeUp is pine straw mulch. It’s my garden equivalent of ‘put a bird on it.’ It covers a multitude of sins and thanks to the diligence of a neighbor who lives in a piney wood and apparently hates pine needles, I have an endless, free supply of bagged pine mulch. Bless you for your diligence and disdain, good sir. I should take him a cake. And I will.

Eventually.

–Daisy