Ten Little Celebrations – April 2023

/

Glorious spring…cool mornings and very pleasant afternoons…flowers…travel. So much to celebrate.

Springfield Botanical Garden and Mizumoto Japanese Stroll Garden. Visiting gardens is one of my favorite spring activities! There is so much to see and celebrate as the gardens come back from winter…blooms abound.

Finding a lost ring in a gardening glove.  I celebrated finding a ring I thought I had lost in the tip of a gardening glove finger. It must have some off with the glove and then pushed to the tip when I put on the glove the next time. It was lost for over a month before I finally realized there was something in the end of glove finger!

Ducklings on the neighborhood pond. Another sign of spring – baby birds. The ducklings were all staying close to their parent…still tiny enough to be vulnerable to turtle predation.

Getting to Pensacola FL. We took our first multi-day vacation since before the pandemic. The drive to Pensacola took us longer than we anticipated but we made it. More posts about our adventures in the week ahead. We both celebrated when we got to the hotel after 13 hours on the road.

Indigo buntings. A small flock of indigo buntings was enjoying the grass/weed area near some buildings in Gulf Islands National Seashore….more than I had ever seen at one time! Celebrated noticing the small birds with vibrant coloring.

Home again. It always feels good to come home again after being away. It happened twice in April: once when I can back from Texas and the again when I returned from Florida. Celebrating being at home.

Mowing the yard. I celebrated that the new yard and new mower are going to be a positive learning experience during the growing season – the yard looks great and the work is helping me build up my stamina, get some ‘intensity minutes’ into my routine.

Forsythia with composting mulch. The idea to pull some none flowering weeds as mulch under the forsythia where there was bare soil has worked beautifully. I celebrated finding a place in the yard to put cut/pulled vegetation rather than taking it to the recycling facility.

Great day to put out mulch around trees in the front yard. After mowing the front yard the first time, I realized the trees needed mulch under them to make mowing eaiser. I celebrated that we had great weather on the day we bought the mulch and were able to complete mulching the trees in the front yard…and celebrated again every subsequent mowing.

Great day to put out mulch around trees in the front yard. After mowing the front yard the first time, I realized the trees needed mulch under them to make mowing eaiser. I celebrated that we had great weather on the day we bought the mulch and were able to complete mulching the trees in the front yard…and celebrated again every subsequent mowing.

Planting bulbs around the red maples. I realized that the mulch around the trees made it easier to plant bulbs too. I planted some summer blooming flowers – lilies and butterfly weed and gladiolas. I celebrated that it was so easy to do…and will be celebrating again when the plants bloom this summer.

Tree Mulching Project

/

When we first moved to Missouri last summer, we hired a crew to mow/weed eat/edge our yard. This season I am doing it. The first time I mowed (with our new battery powered mower…a big improvement over the gasoline powered one we had in Maryland), it was obvious that the job would be easier if the trees had mulch around them – an area large enough to avoid any low branches. The front yard has three trees: 2 red maples and an Asian dogwood. The red maples are relatively young trees so the mulched area did not need to be large. The dogwood had a lot of lower branches that I wanted to keep – hence a larger circle of mulch.

The first step was define the circle I would cover with mulch with very short grass; it was a good project for me to learn to use our new weed eater (also batter powered).

My husband helped me pour bags of mulch and I spread it around with a rake. The red maples took 1.5 bags each and the dogwood took 3 bags.

My follow up plan is to plant some daylilies and butterfly weed in the mulch areas around the red maples. The base of the young trees in sunny because are relatively skinny trees; the plants should do well. I enjoyed the ‘ruff’ of daylilies I had around the base of our oak tree in Maryland, and I hope eventually that will happen around these red maples. The plants might make it easier to extend the mulch circles as the trees grow since they reproduce rapidly. There aren’t deer wondering through our Missouri neighborhood eating buds like candy (like happened in Maryland); I’m looking forward to having flowers!

A Springfield, Missouri Yard

/

My daughter hosted lunch last week at her house. While we were waiting for it to be delivered, I bundled up and walked around her yard; I hadn’t been there since she and I handled the fall leaves back in November. The day was cold, breezy, and sunny.

I enjoyed the textures and colors of the plants left from last summer: leaves of low growing plants in a protected bed with green veins, dry flowers, plants collapsed and curled by frost.

There were seed pods from redbud (a cluster still on the tree!), maple, cones, and magnolia (alas, all the red seeds were gone from all the magnolia pods).

I found myself looking for green – noticing moss and weeds on the brick/stone walkways,

Boxwood, other evergreens along the shady path on the east side of the house, and a fresh magnolia leaf wedged in a pile of leaves from last fall.

I was very pleased that the large piles of leaf mulch my daughter and I made around some of the trees stayed in place. She’ll have less to mow around the trees next summer!