Wednesday, January 14, 2009

No Woman is an Island

...but sometimes...


I feel I have been remiss in my reportage of news from these parts. Recently the Northwest was hit by torrential rains, causing flooding to many of our "neighbors". My heart goes out to those affected by this and I am hoping these last two days of sun-break will do much to dry them out.

The sun coming out finally brought me out. I surveyed my back yard for the first time since the snow. It's a shameless shambles I'm afraid. I didn't get to my usual pre-winter clean up last year and things are a wreck. I'm pretty sure we lost our two new favorite plants - a scented geranium which was thriving and growing like gangbusters - and a black and blue salvia that I fell in love with. Both plants came from The Thyme Garden last Summer. We picked them up on one of our visits to the beach. I love this place. I've been going there and ordering from them for years. It's kind of in the middle of nowhere (they do a big mail order/online business), the property is beautiful and the gardens divine. The whole place is very peaceful and dreamy. Of course they have a wonderful selection of herbs. I don't think I have mentioned before my great passion for herbs. (I once even had a tiny herb related business many years ago.) In fact, this is the first yard I have gardened that I haven't put in a medicinal herb garden. Oh, oh, I have my first real New Year's Revolution to work on, this is exciting!
Excuse the tangent, now where was I? Oh yes, the yard. Well, I am hoping that my Black Elderberry comes back from the freeze, after 3 years it was finally taking off. I lost an Elderberry in 2005 due to snow. My ornamental grasses never got their late Fall haircut and now just look like soggy mops, but they should be fine. The raspberries never got pruned (what the heck was I doing last Fall?) they need to come out anyway. We also need to build two more raised beds for the vegie garden. The good news is, the two new sweet Columbines I planted have already set out a bunch of leaves. The garlic and shallots we planted late Fall are poking through and our mammoth Daphne; while a little frost bitten on the edges, is putting out buds - the smell from the blossoms in February is heavenly.

Well now, I think I might sit down with some tea, polish off some of last night's cornbread and sketch out a garden plan.

1 comment:

Claire MW said...

Oh my, it looks very wet there. Here it is just very, very, very cold. Wind chill of minus 25 today. Temp is minus 16. No water here - just ice!

The corn bread looks super!

I am delighted to hear that your husband understood the Disston name, and thrilled at the prospect that he and Kelly can talk hand planes (so that I don't have to hear about them all the time) He is on some woodworker forums online, I wonder if they are on the same ones. Did your hubby participate in the "Galoot-a-claus" holiday swap on the Old Tools group?