May isn't done with its flood of loveliness. This day! Oh, this day! So stunning that words fail me. Perfect for work outdoors and we both jump right to it. Well, after the usual. Walk to feed animals, breakfast.
I had a vague plan for the day: finish trimming spent flowers on the lilac and maybe snip down some of the saplings growing in the roadside bed. None of that happened. I went out with a bucket and bent down to pull some weeds in the corner of the Big Bed. If you're a longtime reader of Ocean and you pay attention to my gardening saga, you'll have read about the Big Bed. It's one of the first ones that I planted here and over time it grew. And grew. And grew some more, until now it is a Super Big Bed. Because I added plants and extended it over the years, it's rather haphazard. Different parts bloom at different times of the season. It would be splendidly abundant and a riot of color were it not for the big Honey Locust and Norway Maple that grow by the garage shed. Tall trees with a wide canopy, they now provide shade over the bed for a good chunk of the day. What used to be a sunny field is now a partly shady field. Sigh...
Nonetheless, I've not given up hope for this jungle of flowers. (Really, there are hundreds of them in the Big Bed.) And today, once I started pulling weeds, I couldn't stop. I'd done spot plucking throughout the season, but today I did a thorough clearing of it and it took me the whole day. Many, many buckets of creeping charlie, creeping bellflower, common violas, crane's-bill. And millions of saplings: maple, lotus, crab apple.
Most likely I wont do a thorough weeding in this field again this year. I have other priorities: the field by the house, for instance, is my biggest bloomer (it has the most consistent sunlight). I concentrate on that as the summer progresses. Still, I'm happy to have tidied up the Big one. And of course, it kept me outside most of the day which is nothing short of splendid.
And Ed? I gave him the thumbs up on overnight weather: it'll be warm enough now for him to plant the tomatoes. Unusually late this year! The nights have been too cool. In they go now. With a fence this year. Ed is determined to shield them from deer!
This post is like my day -- all about the flower fields and growing things. It's where I stayed all day and it's where my focus was. And look! The first peonies popped open today. Alongside an iris and a yellow false indigo. A lovely late spring combination.
My clematis vines are starting to bloom...
And another surprise -- the day lily, an early one, began its blooming season. In May, of all things.
Beautiful day! Just beautiful.
with love...
