more yard, more flowers, more spring

Wrens were in the house again. I had the back door open the other day, sitting at my desk when a wren flew in and perched on the edge of my desk. It looked at me, I looked at it and then it flew out again (and again, just now). While I was at yoga yesterday the back door was open and a wren flew in and made it all the way into the living room which is unusual. They don't usually go farther than the studio room, maybe the kitchen. Curious little things. The one that made it into the living room knocked several things off the shelf over the kitchen sink on it's way out.

Not much going on around here. I've just about got everything cleaned up from the freeze excepting the things I'm waiting on to dig up. My zinnia seedlings just aren't growing. I wanted them to get a little bigger before putting them in the ground so they wouldn't be so tasty to snails and slugs but I may have to just go ahead and put them in anyway.

Yesterday I worked on the banana trees, digging up the bases of the dead mature trees that bloomed from which new trees sprout and the small trees now coming up that encroached on boldly took over my flower bed requiring me to pull up the landscape block and brick border. When I initially planted the three little banana trees I planted them about two feet from the border. Big mistake because that's at the end of the drain field and while they did expand in all directions they grew mostly toward the flower bed and the source of water from the drain field. The Plan is to replant the little trees in the middle that has been hollowed out by the previous trees dying and to the side hopefully widening the stand. I know that this is an exercise in futility because they're just going to grow into that end of the flower bed again but it will take a couple of years. What I should do is move the crinum lilies and shorten the flower bed and let the banana trees go where they will. But I don't know where I would put the crinum lilies.

The flower bed from the front before I started.

This is the after picture, of course, after I dug up the small new trees and at least four, maybe five, bases of old dead trees that were at least 10” - 12” in diameter of solid stuff. I had to hack them into sections with the shovel to get them out. You can see the missing section of the border.

The 7 or 8 little trees I removed.

The pile of chopped up banana tree cores (on top of previous banana tree trash I just hadn't thrown into the filed yet).

Just after I started my youngest grandgirl, youngest as in 20 (how did these kids get so old), Robin, who has moved back home after her living arrangement in the city changed, texted me...whatcha up to today? So I went and picked her up and she hung out here all day while I worked on the banana trees and had lunch and we visited Pam and her folks came and picked her up on their way home. So that was fun. It's been awhile since I've been able to hang out with Robin.

Once I get done over here I've got several days work still over at the shop property. And then I need to address all the broken PVC water pipes in the shop though plumbing supplies are still in short supply here from all the damage done by the arctic freeze.

It seems like some things are late getting started like the poppies which this time last year were in full bloom and the love-in-a-mist and the rocket larkspur which a week from now last year were in full bloom.

More pics, the indigofera,

the yellow angel trumpet in the too small pot that keeps blooming, all nine flowers are open and it's put on 15 new buds and at this rate I'll never get it moved into the bigger pot,

spiderwort,

bees from my neighbor's hives on the baby blue eyes,

and Joanne's, of Cup On The Bus, iris which she sent to me when Laura moved out and she moved to a smaller house in the complex losing the garden she and Laura worked so hard on. I thought it was a shame that she would lose the iris that she has carried from house to house to house and so she sent me a clump. They have yet to bloom for me but I'm hopeful maybe this year after the really cold weather in case they need that.