Playing in the dirt

It's a little warmer here this weekend than it's been in a while. Spring is right around the corner no matter what the calendar says, and by the first of March it will be time to start seeds indoors for planting out six weeks or so later. Early tomorrow morning Gregg and I will be picking up three or four truckloads of dirt to finish filling the raised garden bed. It's almost halfway full from the first two loads, and I'm eager to have it done. Next week I'll place my seed order for the tomatoes, peppers, herbs and flowers I'm planning to grow this year.

Speaking of placing orders, today I placed an order for my Valentine's Day gift from Gregg: a crabapple tree! I ended up choosing a variety called Centurion. I told him last week that while I love cut flowers, this year I'd rather we spent that money on things I could plant in my yard and garden!

Once it arrives (supposedly by February 21...I ordered from Home Depot) and is in the ground, we'll chop down the dying dogwood tree that's currently in our front yard. 

I got a text last week from our friend Carol (the retired artist and avid gardener who gave me the start of my fig tree) asking if I might be interested in some camellias. Of course I said YES! She has them growing in huge wild tangles along one side of her property and she was digging up some to share with friends. I went over there today and picked up a big bundle of them. The area where she dug them up has several colors, so I'm not sure what we'll end up with. My favorites have white flowers with pale pink stripes in them, but they're all nice. The seedlings she gave me are three or four feet high and have green flower buds on them, so we should soon know! I hope they'll grow and thrive. Before I left Carol said, "My mother always said that flowers shared with friendship and good wishes will always bloom!" 

Here's one more small bit of gardening news. I bought a big bag of deeply discounted daffodil bulbs over Christmas and planted them on New Year's Day. I've been hoping they didn't get planted too late to bloom this year. Well, earlier today I went out to check, and the first quarter inch of green spears are starting to poke up from the ground! Looks like we'll have daffodils next month, after all! 

I'm so glad my favorite season is almost here. 

The return of winter, spring plans

Two weeks of abnormally warm and tropical weather spanning the Christmas holidays have given way to a blustery, cold, wet and somewhat abrupt return to winter. Thunderstorms (in January!) with lots of rain and wind blew through last night, bringing in the change. Happy New Year!

On New Year's Day I finally got around to planting the big bag of daffodil bulbs I found on a clearance rack at Lowe's last month. I knew that a lot of rain was in the immediate forecast, so it seemed like a good time to plant. It is awfully late, though. I think bulbs are best planted in the fall, so they may not bloom for me this year. Or at all. Who knows? They were cheap and there were a lot of them (45) so maybe we'll see a few daffodils. They're planted in clumps around our Crepe Myrtle trees, and they're supposed to be King Alfred types.

In other gardening news, I've come to a sad realization about the garden I'm planning for this year. Last fall we built a large raised bed out of the edging stones left on our property from the last owner. It looks great and I was really looking forward to using it! Well, yesterday we sat down to figure out how many cubic feet of compost and topsoil we would need to fill in the space, and then went online to price said compost and topsoil, and I got a nasty surprise. Even with the best possible deals from landscaping suppliers, it would take upwards of $500 to fill in the space! We still need so many things for our house that I just can't justify spending that kind of money for garden dirt. Sigh. So now I'm rethinking the raised bed thing altogether and may have to settle for a regular ground level garden. Then there's the prospect of having to move all those stones we built the bed with. My back aches just thinking about it!

So that's disappointing, but I remain firm in the conviction that I need a large garden this year. I'll just have to make it happen in a different way for the time being.

Tomorrow, I go back to work. It's been a fantastic break, and I'm a bit sad to see it end, but I'll be glad to get back to normal. "Back to normal" may not be so normal, though, because all of a sudden the new omicron variant of Covid has exploded around here. It's gotten so bad that even without a state mandate, I doubt we'll have enough staff to keep schools open once the holiday exposures really start to show up. I hope I'm wrong about that; time will tell. 

Spring happiness

Spring equinox has arrived! It's been a long, cold, dreary winter and I'll be glad to see the last of it.
March has been so chilly and overcast this year that everything is blooming and budding on a slightly delayed schedule.

Daffodils are still going strong, and the ornamental pear trees that line our street seem to be holding on to their blossoms longer than usual. It's nice when spring takes it's time arriving.

The lengthening days make me happy. I love the new young grass, the flowering trees, and the smell outside after it rains. The wild birds are getting the nesting season underway in earnest these days. There are new sparrow babies in the old birdhouse outside our kitchen window.




Goldfinches only stop here briefly in the early
 spring. They like to spend their summers further north.

My birthday is Sunday, and I'm giving myself the best gift ever: I'm taking almost a week off work! Five whole days, to do whatever I want and to enjoy myself. The plan is to take a little break from the Internet during this vacation, to avoid wasting any of the precious hours. I want to hang out with the dogs, and spend time outside enjoying the beautiful weather, and maybe work on some craft projects I haven't had time for recently. It's going to be great!

I'll be catching back up with everyone at the end of the month. In the meantime, I hope you all are enjoying the arrival of spring and having a happy month of March!

March is here!

March is here, and the weather has taken a turn back towards winter. It's barely above the freezing mark today, and last night there were reports of sleet. This winter weather is getting old. This is the South. The month of March should be warmer and nicer than this!

No flower seems more iconic of this month than the lovely daffodil. They're beginning to bloom already despite the cold weather. (This photo was taken several years ago, but somewhat later in the season. No trees are leafing out here yet!) I've already picked two bunches from our yard to make our dining room table pretty. I love daffodils, since they're always in bloom when my birthday rolls around. Later this month I will be 39 years old. Yikes!

I've been super busy lately, and have had a hard time finding chances to blog. There have been doctor's appointments for my ongoing stomach issues--and I have to have an endoscopy of my upper digestive system in two weeks--and I'm hoping they finally figure out what's going on in there. I've been working a lot, and also job hunting (still), and did I mention that I'm learning Spanish? I've been studying diligently in my spare time. I want to be able to put basic Spanish on my resume by the time summer rolls around. I have a friend from Venezuela that works in the mall where my bookstore is located, and whenever I see him I get to practice having simple conversations. It's been lots of fun, and I have someone to go to with questions. He says I'm progressing very nicely! I've also been spending a lot of my free time working with George. He's finally coming along with learning basic commands and walking properly on a leash, but it's been a good deal of work. All of that together adds up to less time in front of the computer. I have been keeping up with all of my friends' blogs, though, even if I don't always have time to leave comments much lately.

Robins and daffodils

February has arrived with bright sunshine, high winds, and bitterly cold temperatures. The days are noticeably longer now (we've gained more than an hour of daylight since the solstice) and some of the earliest-blooming trees are beginning to show tiny new buds, despite the cold. The birds are busy all day at the feeders, and are very vocal this time of year. It's almost the beginning of their nesting season, after all.

The day before our coldest night yet, huge flocks of robins arrived in the area. We first started noticing them two days ago around our neighborhood and in our back yard. There must have been several hundred of them at least. Then yesterday GB and a friend of his went out hiking around the Pee Dee river (deep in the woods and swamps around the water) and they saw even more massive flocks of robins. He said they were everywhere, in the trees and on the river banks and flying around.  I know I've never seen so many at once around our house, and the river is 10 miles from here. Apparently thousands of them have moved south into the area to avoid the current cold front sweeping the east coast. Today most of them seem to be gone. My guess is they're moving on, further south where it's warmer. Smart birds!

Yesterday I discovered a sweet little clump of daffodils blooming in a slightly sheltered spot in our back yard. I've never been able to resist picking daffodils, so they had to come into the house with me! They're currently brightening up our kitchen windowsill:

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Even flowers probably appreciate a respite from the icy winds outside!