Miscellaneous, mostly garden

On Tuesday, I woke up with a sore throat. By Thursday, I had a head stuffed solid with mucus. Malfunctioning mucus machine. Red nose, sore sinuses, fogged in brain. Head cold. Blah. But the weather started improving. Today, I spent a couple of hours outside, thinning and weeding in the garden, burning the mucus out in the nearly seventy degree weather. The head cold has retreated, for now. Victory spring!

In news along those lines, I think we may own the wrong garden for our personality types here. Recall that we purchased our house from a botanist. How do I describe the garden? Purposely overgrown. Planned chaos. We have added sprinklers and put in paths to tame it a bit, but it is still a riot of plants. Roses and raspberries and fruit trees and other surprises. Fig. Currant. Poppy. Hollyhock. Those are some of the plants we have identified. It is a gorgeous garden. Colorful and mysterious and highly useful.

And exhausting.

I only covered a small portion of the yard that needs love and care in my hours outside. Plants must be thinned, weeds must be pulled. And what in the world are we growing behind the shed? We need a full time gardener for this.

But that would take away all the fun.

While I weeded, Tim dug some holes for new trees that should be arriving this week. We had four dead trees that we will replace with tiny new ones. The longer we live here, the smaller the garden becomes, as we thin and cut down and prune. It will grow back. Too fast.

And while we're talking gardens, we should mention the front yard. Our front yard faces north, and the garden is directly under two large trees. Full shade, all the time. What do you grow in full shade? Currently, we only grow ivy there, although we used to have a large bush that smelled like old socks. I don't really want to put back the old sock bush. I have some plans, though. They involve stones, and a bench, and probably about eight large-ish shrubs to purchase. I don't trust any local nurseries -- they're the ones who sold us dead trees. I may want to go shrub shopping up north. Kris -- do you want to go shrub shopping with me? Is April too early for planting shrubs?

Real gardeners know the answers to these questions. The botanist would have known. Me, I just like to be outside melting head colds. Pretending to be a gardener.