Our yard (front and back) is in bloom and we have all sorts of flowers, herbs, and veggies coming up.  The grass is thick and green and the couple of bare spots where the overgrown bushes used to be have now been reseeded and they are now sprouting tiny green slivers of Kelly green cover.  The vine maple is in full leaf and is a pleasure to both look at and to lay under in an afternoon hammock snooze

I woke up early Saturday morning and took some pictures of the rhododendrons in the front and various sprouty things in the back just to document the current state of affairs for some friends and family who have been asking.  Progress in the yard redo is slower than we had wanted – mostly due to us being overly ambitious for the first year in the new house, my own inaction, a screwed up shoulder, and our convoluted schedule.  We had planned to have the garden boxes in, but it doesn’t look like they are going to make it this season as I am just running out of time and more projects inside the house have appeared.  For now we are growing our kitchen herbs, garlic, and tomatoes in planters/containers and will expand that little by little for the next month to include peppers, three additional tomatoes, two more blueberries, and some yellow squash.  I had hoped to have the apple, lemon, and cherry trees taken care of, but as yet the Lapin cherry is the only thing that is growing roots.  The raspberries and thorn-less-blackberries are chugging along and I have started tying the canes to galvanized wire on the fence.  Someone is going to have cool fresh raspberries in his cereal come June J

The plan for our front yard is currently going through a bit of a shift, mostly because of the neighbors to the north of us:  It is a rent house with two 20-something guys (referred to by some of the other neighbors as Bevis and Butthead) who are in a metal band,  work(-ish) in construction, and are living what could be called an extended adolescence.  Loud band practice at 1:30 AM, wafting pot smoke, firecrackers in the middle of the night, beer bottles on the sidewalk, grass two feet high, trash all over the front stoop, trucks occasionally parked in the yard, etc…  They are nice enough guys to talk to, but we don’t want to look at that every day.   So, we have left the two 10’ tall rhodies on the north fence until either they move or accidentally burn their house down in the middle of the night while lighting the bong.  The Belgium fence of heirloom apples and roses is on hold until then.  Additionally, I had wanted to rip out the two rhododendron bushes in the front and replace them with red and white azaleas – Laurel made me wait until they bloomed and she was right, they are beautiful and they get to stay.  We are going to thin them some after they are finished blooming and will plant just two white azaleas on each front corner of the house.

I have been watering and potting and weeding in the back a little when I get home in the afternoons and this is exactly the bliss that I had imagined and wanted when we put the offer in on Casa d’ Talley in June of last year.  Gathering sticks and string for our nest…