Gardening Baby Steps

I started writing this post last Monday. Now six days later, on Sunday, I’m composing this first sentence. I got only so far as to think of a title for the post. I’ll be inside most of today as the ‘good weather’ of the past week has finally reversed (as so often happens during springtime on the Great Plains). As I look out my home office window, the trees and lawns wax verdant. My mail box flower garden sports a single red Dahlia bloom while the Gazanias sleep in.

Sunday morning view out my home office window (looking southeast down Fawn Valley)

My front yard drama I’ll cover in a separate post that will become a review, possibly scathing, of a local lawn and landscape company. But I will not mar this post with dark brooding thoughts.

Over the past few days, I’ve planted a Dahlia, four Gazanias and sixteen moss roses (also known as Portaluca). I bought a bag of mulch but I had so many moss roses I’m not sure I can squeeze in the mulch between all these plants. All of this in half my flower garden on the south side of my mail box. The north side is still dominated by my two robust day lily plants. I had two on the south side but that bed was damaged sometime in the last year or two and I’ve lost one of the day lilies and the remaining one is small and stressed. At the end of this year, I’ll probably completely redo this flower bed, put in new soil and find some different perennials, leaving some space for annuals to switch out next year.

Click on photo of the Gazania to see my Flowers and Herbs photo album, updated frequently with new photos.
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A Cold Dark Oven

I’m thankful for many things this Thanksgiving.  Oddly, I’m somewhat thankful even for my cold, dark oven.

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I’m thankful that I won’t be on my feet for hours today prepping and baking for a family gathering.  For the first time in I don’t know how many years, I will not be basting and roasting a turkey.  I won’t be making more stuffing (I already succumbed last week and made a huge batch of stuffing because I couldn’t help myself). I might not escape baking entirely today, though, as I may break down and make Sticky Buns because it’s a TRADITION!

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Plowed Yard Update

Back in early February, when all of northeastern Kansas was being bounded by a blizzard of ice, snow and frigid temperatures, the overeager local City maintenance personnel thought to help me with snow removal not only in my court, by in the my yard as well.  (See my previous blog post for the ‘before’ photos).

The City stopped by sometime this week and ‘repaired’ my plowed yard so here’s on the ‘after’ photos:

City Repairs Plow Damage to Moss Yard
City Repairs Plow Damage to Moss Yard

We’ll see if the grass takes root.  I don’t have a hose long enough to reach from the front of the house clear to the corner of Bambi Court and Fawn Valley so I can’t readily water it.

Since I had my ‘good’ digital camera in hand, I wandered back up to the house and took a macro photo of some of the persistent early spring flowers growing on the south side of my house:

Pretty Pink Early Spring Flowers (I have no idea what it is)
Pretty Pink Early Spring Flowers (I have no idea what it is)