Deck Watcher

A couple years ago, I gave one of these to my sister for Christmas.

I've wanted one for myself ever since.

Back in May, I stumbled across a sale on collegiate merchandise at a fan site I've frequented in the past. This guy, usually $24.99, was on sale for $10. I also got another Hawkeye tee shirt because I realized all the shirts I have are from bowl games. I didn't have a shirt which just said "Hawkeyes". As shipping was a flat rate, I got a shirt.

He's happily amongst the flower pots on the deck.

Come winter, I'll bring him in and find a place in the living room. Makes me happy to come out here and sit.

Beverage:  Scottish Breakfast Tea

Deb

Yard Work

I've been busy in the yard. The first thing to do was weed the front beds by the arbor.

By the time I got to them, they were weedy but not overgrown. I bought Round-Up to spray on the trees which are in the beds. I don't have the stamina to dig them out, but Round-Up does work, to an extent, to kill them. You just need to be fairly religious about spraying and, in that respect, I'm not. But I can pull weeds because I can sit down while doing that.

Along with the weeding, there was planting to be done. Here's the south side of the arbor.

The dirt is not very good in these areas. I should have someone rototill mushroom compost into the soil, along with some garden soil in an effort to make these beds better for flowers. It will, of course, bring long dormant weed seeds to where they can sprout, but I can deal with weeding.

Because I don't have anyone who can rototill, my solution is to dig holes in the ground and fill those with a mix of soil and compost. Plants I want out front then go into the holes. On the south side, I have some annual daisies and several morning glories. The black mass in the left center is where I've planted the sunflowers from last year. I have milkweed, of course. It tends to like craptastic soil like this. I was late getting the sunflowers in the ground but they are doing well as of today.

This is the north side.

Right now, all I have in this bed are a couple of coleus. They are quite distinctive in marking but it looks a little sad on this side. I think, this weekend, after I've paid bills, I will go to the nursery and get a small fern and a hosta for this side. It's 80% shade anyway. I have a marigold plant to replace on the deck, too.

Moving to the front of the house, I cleared out the north side, under the picture window.

The tube feeder is a huge hit, with finches, sparrows and cardinals all frequenting the perches. I spent time trimming back the lilac and the cherry tree off the right side of the photo. My loppers is not working well anymore. It binds in the joint and generous applications of WD-40 don't seems to be loosening it. Perhaps I should look into the cost of new ones.

I need to do the usual weeding but I'm happy with how things have progressed. Best of all, :::cue Frank Sinatra::: I did it my way.

Beverage:  Klarbrunn Black Cherry Seltzer

Deb

It Only Took Two Months

I have some interesting friends. One of them posted a silly horoscope to her Facebook page. I responded by writing something totally off the cuff. She challenged me to write the whole story to go with that sentence.

Immediately, work got crazy. I was traveling every week, sometimes three to four days out of that work week. In so doing, I figured out where the nearest Panera was to my travels.

I printed out the horoscope and pasted it into this journal I was going to use for the collection of quotes from the books I read. (I have abandoned that idea in favor of post-its because I don't want to stop, copy a quote, and read on. It breaks the rhythm. I have the post-its handy for ripping off a sheet and slapping it into the book where it marks the lines I liked.) When I had time to kill, Panera was great. I could get lunch and work on the story and they didn't mind. Around me, people were hooked up to the internet, doing whatever they needed to. I had my journal and my gel pens and I wrote and wrote and wrote.

I was very proud of myself when, after a couple weeks of this, I'd reached paged 23.

No, the journal pages are not numbered. I have to do that myself, but that simple task delivered a great feeling of accomplishment. How far in advance should I number them? Was 30 enough? No. Not even close. 50? I might be half-way through. I'm not sure. I settled on 100.

I wrote in various fragments of time; at the doctor's office at the end of May; at the office when burning CDs or processing data tied up my computer for long stretches. May was cold and damp and I felt the words struggle to flow through my pen onto the pages. Some days, I could barely manage a page. Other days, three and four pages of text seemed to sprint onto the lines. I went through one pack of gel pens and had to buy another.

And then life caught up and all these things I needed/wanted to do called to me and the journal was set aside for a time. I knew exactly how the story would end. I knew the characters. I knew, mostly, the dialog. It was getting it committed to the pages of the journal. I wasn't feeling inspired.

Then, last Saturday, a glorious day of moderate temperatures and warm sunshine, I got the deck into sitting mode.

All the plants are planted, although I need another marigold for one which didn't make it. The statuary is out. There is a table for a drink and supplies, and there is the comfort of flowers.

The geraniums, as I've said, are rather spindly and will be cut back in the next week. This space is inviting now. I don't feel like it needs more than the usual deadheading of flowers. I can sit out here and work on whatever project I have in front of me, be it a book, a cross-stitch, or a story. Of course, my flow gets interrupted by "Hamlet! Deck! Now!" He was so good but has since regressed, although he comes when I call. He's timid, as the girls are, so I probably could let him loose while I finished a chapter or a line of stitching, but I worry and that not good for concentration.

Anyway, Sunday, finally, after two months of off and on writing, I could write "The End".

It's 82 pages in the journal which might type up to 40 pages on 8.5 x 11 inch paper. I changed verb tenses in the last quarter of the story, preferring the ending tenses to the beginning. It made more sense. I'm probably the worst editor of my stuff. I agonize over punctuation placement and whether this word is exactly what I want to use. I didn't do much editing of the raw product but it was hard, when I had to go backwards a few pages to remember where the story was and where it needed to go. Oh gee. That's not the right wording there, and out comes the editor in me.

The next step is to type this up so my friend can read it. After that, I have no idea what I'll do with this, other than mark something complete and move on to the next idea. She mentioned, while driving in the rain one day, seeing a book, pages flapping in the wind, in the median of the road she was on. Did someone leave it on the top of their car and drive off? Or did they heave it out the window during a rainstorm, on purpose? If so, why would you do that to a book? She never specifies the size of the book. So many ideas.

This is a great victory for me. I got the deck set up for a summer of relaxation AND I finished something I'd started. On to the next project!

Beverage:  Water

Deb

It's Deck Time, Part 1

We've come through a highly erratic spring with snow, rain, chill, damp, 80 degrees in February, which I know isn't spring, but it plants the seeds, so to speak. This past weekend marks the unofficial beginning of summer. For me, what better way than to spend an hour at Planter's Palette, oogling the offerings. I came home with four flats and one pot of flowers.

Take note of the really dirty birdbath. I have no clue what that red stuff was. I do know birds weren't using the bath at all.

There are 6 flowers in that light blue container to the left. Those were ordered from Select Seeds. I love their plants but I can't, for the life of me, get the delivery correct. They sat in the kitchen for 2 weeks because it was too cold to put them outside. I think it's best that I just don't try to order plants and simply go to the nursery when I'm ready to plant.

Now that I've got most of what I want, it's time to decide what to plant first. The Diva was there to keep me focused on the task at hand. Friends, seeing this photo, have said she has "resting annoyed face".

I decided the first thing to do was liberate the raised bed.

The weeds really took off this spring. The tall stalks are the leftover sunflowers which weren't going back in the bed. They are going out front this year. I've seen one hummingbird around so I need to get flowers planted which are attractive to them. I think I will also put up the feeder. I found it over the weekend. Nothing like a 2 ounce bird to get you inspired.

After weeding, I mixed up the soil and found these.

It's a bit tough to see, but those are earthworms. I am elated! That means, to me, the soil is a good consistency and healthy. Into this box went peppers.

What 15 minutes of weeding can do to transform an area. I should get weed killer and spray around the box to help keep the weeds down. I added the metal poppies although I probably should have washed them out.

The one on the end has a bent stem. I couldn't bend it more straight so it will always be an end poppy. There are orange, yellow, orange, yellow, orange peppers in the box. Those are my favorites. The plants already have peppers on them so perhaps, by July 4th, I'll be eating home grown, assuming the squirrels don't have a taste for peppers.

The peppers are right across from the hosta which has been off the northwest corner of the deck for well 'nigh 20+ years. It's huge this year.

I don't know if the removal of the trash trees to the north and the freeing up of sunlight or what, but it's never been this big. I'm thrilled. The daylilies in the background have started to spread into the lawn to the northwest. That's annoying, but I can mow over what I don't want.

Now on to part 2.

Beverage:  Earl Grey tea

Deb

It's Deck Time, Part 2

The next step was to wash the birdbath. Oh was that nasty. I took it into the house and scrubbed with dish soap and a stiff brush. Thankfully, it didn't smell. It was just red and weird. It's really important to thoroughly rinse the bath after scrubbing like this because who wants to ingest soap.

That made me feel so much better. The birds haven't been using the bath so I'm hopeful cleaning it out will make them return.

I turned my attention to the southwest corner of the deck.

Perhaps the spring weather encouraged growth. I can't have all this greenery in front of the air conditioning unit. That makes the motor run harder. Here, too, the daylilies at the upper right corner of the photo, were encroaching everywhere. But it's not just them. I don't know what all the plants are which took over the space. I just know they needed to be removed.

This was a 40 minute bit of work. I should probably pull daylilies from the side of the unit, too; move them back a foot. What this area now needs is for me to get mulch and lay landscaping fabric in front of the unit. There is old fabric buried in this area. Daylilies reproduce by roots so they simply burrowed under the fabric and spread. A spray of weed killer, then fabric, and top that with mulch will keep the area clear. It's overgrown to the right, but that's a project for another day.

I have, in past years, put datura in the pot, but the last two daturas I bought didn't do very well. This year, I'm trying nicotiana; tobacco plant. The colors are dark purple and chartreuse. I usually add alyssum to this pot, to surround the datura, but I think I'll forgo the alyssum here this year. I need to get a bag of washed stones and dig out the ground under the pot so it stands more flat.

After finishing this, because I had to trim to the ground, some small trees, I trimmed back some trees around the compost pile. What you can't see is, to the right, a mound of plant life which I'm going to bag up and put out for recycling. I thought about adding everything except the tree trimmings to the compost pile, but daylilies love compost and, since I can't, currently, find the top to the compost receptacle, I knew stuff wouldn't compost. Instead, I'd have a pile taken over by daylilies. I think the top is in amongst stuff near the composter. If I find the top, I can drop all this greenery into the bin and have good compost for the yard.

I was getting tired and although the day was wonderful, I knew I needed to not push myself and to take a break. But there was a bit more I wanted to do.

Beverage:  Earl Grey Tea

Deb

It's Deck, and More Time, Part 3

Having pulled weeds from around the deck, it was time to look at deck flowers. The big thing is where do I want to sit when I'm out there. Last year, I sat with my back to the west deck wall. That was nice, but surrounding the birdbath with flowers, while pretty, didn't seem to be conducive to birds actually using it. To me, it appears big enough to find, but maybe all the foliage around it was scary to them. In placing feeders, you are told to put them where birds have a visible means of escape, should a predator come by. Perhaps that is true of birdbaths.

I think I shall put the chair up against the house this year, adjacent to the back door. I moved the geraniums to the deck, which means it's officially deck time. I have to repot all but the large one as those eggs I saw last year are all over the tops of the small geraniums. I also think the white one will have to be replaced. It didn't overwinter very well.

The geraniums will go along the north deck wall, where they get full benefit of the afternoon sun. Then, I'll put a couple of pots along the west deck wall and leave open, mostly, the birdbath.

I started with the small pot which will, probably, sit on the southwest corner at an angle.

It contains two different colors of sweet potato vines and a plant in the middle that opens during the day but closes at night which I can't remember the name of, but I left the pink tag so when I can't remember, I can look at the tag. Below that is a pot of all marigolds. I love marigolds.

Next up, I filled a couple pots for adjacent to the birdbath.

There are petunias, including a "wave" petunia in shades of yellow and orange, in the back pot. In front is a verbena, a Gerbera daisy, and a strange plant I knew I had to have. I'm not sure I left the pink tag in that pot so I don't remember what it was. The verbena is supposed to cascade over the side. The daisy just called to me. Such a vibrant color.

Yesterday, before heading to cross-stitch club, I took care of the front step flowers.

I keep coming back to begonias. I tried impatiens but they did not do well here. Normally, the plants are on the south side of the steps but I had to replace my dairy box this year and it's an actual Coleman cooler, twice the size of the old box. It couldn't be at the top of the steps where the old one sat. This means the begonias have to be on the north side of the steps. I don't know how that will work since begonias prefer shade and this side gets half again as much sun as sitting against the south handrail, but we'll see.

In the span of three days, I reduced the four boxes to two. What's left are more verbena for a pot, three cosmos, and the plants for the front by the arbor. I have seed packets I want to try this year so one pot is being given over to seeds. The arbor area needs to be weeded and a couple of volunteer trees trimmed way back and sprayed with Round-Up in an attempt to kill them. That's a weekend project, not something to tackle after a full day at work. Also on the docket is weeding the front flower bed to the north of the steps. You can see the green through the hand rail. That's where another birdbath sits and where the hummingbird and seed feeders go.

All of these projects take 90 minutes to 2 hours to complete, at best. This is what I need to remember to do. Pace myself. Do a bit here and there. It's important to create an inviting space, one I want to be in. Small steps this past weekend toward that goal.

Beverage:  Earl Grey tea

Deb

Tall and Green

A last couple of posts about the Mexican sunflowers I planted last spring.

They were so happy in the raised bed. They easily topped out at the 6 foot maximum height listed on the packet. There were so many flowers which, as I posted earlier were enjoyed by hummingbirds AND by monarch butterflies.

They took over the raised bed. It was glorious. I do feel that glory belongs in the front where others can see it. Plus, I can use the raised bed to grow foodstuffs.

So, I'll try to be better about blogging with photos this year so you can watch their progress as they grow.

Beverage:  Scottish Breakfast tea

Deb

Fleurs

A couple of things from the deck flowers last year which were successful.

1) Zinnias in a pot.

I sat next to this pot all summer, when I was stitching on the deck. It never failed to provide cheer. I adore zinnias. I'm pretty sure I have some old zinnia seeds in the basement seed packets. I should dump a mix out front when I plant the sunflowers. I'll buy plants for the pot on the deck.

2) Chocolate cosmos.

This was a new find from Select Seeds. It does not, unfortunately, smell like chocolate. I put three plants in a pot with a "wavy" petunia.

The petunia cascaded over the sides of the pot and it's green-edged pink flowers were most striking. But, as the summer wore on, it required lots and lots of water to not shrivel. In the end, it was dessicated long before any other flowers were. I did not get it in my order this year.

I did get more of the cosmos. I think if combined with white snapdragons, this could be a very distinctive pot pairing. We'll have to see. the cosmos tolerated the few dry spells we had and kept blooming, as long as I deadheaded it, well past the first light frost. I love wild colors in flowers so this definitely is a keeper.

Beverage:  Dunkin' Donuts tea

Deb

Sunflowers

I planted Mexican sunflowers last year. We think of sunflowers as these.

These are the big, bright smiles from which we get our black oil sunflower seeds. What I planted wasn't anything like these.

They are orange, brilliantly red-orange or orange-red. The flowers themselves are not the dinner plate size we associate with sunflowers. These were, at best, 4-5 inches across. The stalks were tall, eventually topping out at close to 6 feet tall, which is similar to the above sunflowers. They had a lot of leaves, which, I explained, shielded my peppers from the sun, something I had not planned for.

Squirrels and birds love the top sunflower. If you grow them in your yard, you're advised to put a pair of panty hose over the seed head, if you don't want to share. The Mexican ones didn't set a seed head. They attracted something rarer.

I don't know if you can see it. There is a hummingbird at the flower on the left. All summer, from the time these started blooming through just after Labor Day, I had hummingbirds in the yard.

Catching them for a photograph is extraordinarily challenging. He's just above the flower second from the left. There was never more than one around the sunflowers at any given time. Occasionally, one would show up at the front window, almost as if he was asking if there was any nectar.

I am extraordinarily pleased with these plants, but, as I've talked about in previous posts, they need to be somewhere else. I think the front of my house would benefit tremendously from sunflowers. I saw monarch butterflies around them too and you all know how much I adore those. Combined with the milkweed I already grow, this would be a huge boost to their habitat.

The other thing I'm considering is a hummingbird feeder in the front next to the pole feeder and bird bath. The pole feeder was toppled, I believe by yard denizens so I need to anchor it better and deeper in the ground. That has to wait for the thaw to be completely out of the ground and some warmer temperatures. I still have a hummingbird feeder from years ago. I'm debating. It's been decades since I saw these in my yard and then they come back full force. I should decide what to do to encourage them to stay.

Beverage:  Water

Deb

Two and a Half Weeks

It will be the Spring Equinox. The examples of its arrival are in abundance.

This blurry image shows the area between the front birdbath and the house. I'm hoping those are tulips. There were Shirley tulips in this bed, but I worried they were eclipsed by the overgrown nature of the beds. I should probably move the bath to make sure nothing is trying to sprout under it.

On the other side, the hyacinths and tulips are pushing through the ground. I don't see the crocus but they are notorious for not being visible and, the next day, being everywhere.

The Weather Channel announced Chicagoland had a dubious record today. It's the first January and February in 146 years where there has not been any snow cover. We did have snow overnight on Saturday, but it stuck only on my deck and car, not on the grass or even the sidewalk. Our precipitation has been rain. We need more of that, honestly. With the thaw out of the ground, there's no water when you dig down, as I discovered when I planted the bird feeder pole. We should be seeing some plants poking their heads through the ground now, that's normal, but the unseasonable warmth of the last week has accelerated growth and that's not really a good thing.

People were complaining the weather had turned "cold" this week. I just shake my head. It's a good 20 degrees above what is statistically normal. 55 is NOT normal. We should still have a foot of snow cover.

It's hard to plan the yard when the weather is weirder than usual. I mentioned getting seeds for the front. Do I start to look for pansies or should I just wait until the end of April for more tender plants to arrive in greenhouses? I remember snow on Memorial Day but I'm thinking that's not going to happen again.

I'll watch these bulbs and we'll see how quickly they grow. And, more importantly, we'll see what they are. I need to remove the rest of some volunteer trees which were cut back, down to the ground, in early June. While I'm itching to get out the shovel and trowel and the seed packets. I need to remember the last 'frost free' date is technically May 15th. Wonder if they will modify that, ever.

Beverage:  Water

Deb

Overwinter This

If you've visited here for any length of time, you know I overwinter geraniums every year. The big pink one has been around for, I think 8 years now. I bring them in when nighttime temperatures get below 40 and they don't go back out until nighttime temperatures get to 55 or above. I repotted a couple last year and tossed one that didn't make it. It was spindly when I brought it in and I worried, but it hung on until April when it developed root rot and fell over.

One of the geraniums I repotted didn't really need it, but when I moved it outside, I noticed this on the top of the soil.

Further examination showed these are egg masses. I don't get grossed out by much, but this was unpleasant. I wound up dumping all the soil out of this pot and moving this geranium to a different pot entirely. This pot was soaked in dish detergent and used, in June for annuals.

No, I don't completely know what bug chose to lay eggs in my geranium. This was the ONLY one, out of 5 pots, which had this. Initially, I thought it was salt from watering, but when I moved the geranium outside, I noticed the little spheres. A friend has suggested these are stink bug eggs. I assumed they laid their eggs in my walls and that's why I'll never, ever, be rid of them. They stay warm in the insulation of the walls, hatch and come out to fly around the warmth of the living room lamps. (Hamlet loves to chase them, but he's learned you don't bite them.)

I'm at a loss about what these could have been. Whatever they were, they were unceremoniously dumped in the back yard. I'm planning to repot all the geraniums this spring, to give them fresh soil. I haven't seen anything like this but there are still 2 months to go before they are back on the deck for spring, summer and fall.

Beverage:  Irish Breakfast tea

Deb

Slow Transformation

It was mid May of last year. I was dreading the thought of mowing the lawn so I hadn't done it. It wasn't that long, but it was getting there. I was online, playing World of Warcraft with friends, and there was a knock on the front door. Answering it, here stood a young man offering to do yard work. He gave me a good price and said he could mow the lawn in the next 2 hours and he would pick up tree branches and haul them away. Given that I was a bit achy from my RA, sure. After mowing the lawn, he wanted to know if I wanted him to do it every week. Well, every week, particularly in the summer, is a bit much. I had issues with the last lawn service I hired billing me for work I don't think they ever did. His price was good, plus, he trimmed around things and hauled away fallen branches.

Over the course of the past summer, Jeremy has been my landscaper. We've looked at what was overgrown and decided what needed to be handled and what I could afford.

He understands how important those milkweed plants are so he carefully trims around them and we let some sections get scruffy if the milkweed is too close to be trimmed without losing one.

One of the places he made a difference last year, was in the front.

There used to be planting beds on either side of the walk. The arbor used to stand upright. Both of those things had been lost over the course of several years.

The white cap is the clean out for the sewer line from the house to the street. Jeremy removed all the sod from here and reawakened the beds.

He dug up and replanted the arbor so it stands upright. I should get a new one, but that's way low on the list of things to buy for the yard.

There was a volunteer tree in the north bed and he dug that up. Found the few bits of statuary I had on either side.

The warning sign and the squirrel were not in the best shape and had to be discarded. The rabbit is concrete and just needed to be washed off to go back in the bed.

I didn't get things planted right away, so some weeds grew back, but there were a few flowers on both sides last year.

It can be tough to get down on the ground and weed, but it's good for the soul.

This year, I'm putting seeds in the beds. There will be sunflowers and coreopsis. I'll still fill in with a few plants, but the sunflowers I grew last year did so well, they deserve to be seen from the street. Also on the docket, will be a rehabbing of the prairie plant bed.

I want to enlarge this and add more plants. The milkweed do well, but I haven't had daisies or black-eyed susans for many years. I also want to move it about a foot away from the drive. I have a tendency, when I back in, to run over the 6 inches closest to the drive. The plants which are in the bed, purple coneflower, will simply be dug up and moved. With someone to do the initial digging, I can do the planting. Enjoying your space. That's what this is all about.

Beverage:  Hot Cocoa

Deb

Now These are Cool

Dashed over to the grocery on Sunday to pick up ingredients for the next two new recipes I'm making. One, involving hamburger, I'm having second thoughts on, but I must persevere. The other is cookies so those I'm not worried about.

As I was leaving, my eye caught these lilies by the exit.

They were called "Love in Bloom". I like the dramatic deep burgundy contrasted with the white. My favorite lilies are "Stargazers", which are very similar to these.

They aren't as deep burgundy and have more "freckles". It would be outstanding to have a bed of lilies with all white in the center and then these two around the outside. Not on the list of garden things this year.

Happy Valentine's Day.

Beverage:  Water

Deb

Garden Planning

The days are getting longer. After what seemed like a full two solid weeks of gray skies, there have been brilliantly blue sunny skies. Even though I start to get seed and plant catalogues after Thanksgiving, I simply pile them on the ottoman and don't really start looking at them until now. It's kind of useless to plan when I haven't the cash to make any purchases.

Over the weekend, I sorted through the stack, recycling over 75% of them. It's time to start thinking of what I want this year. I reconfigured where the flowers were on the deck last year.

Usually, this corner is flowers. I had zinnias in a pot to the left, as you're sitting, of the chair. I bought that mesh table because Pilchard likes to sit on the ottoman to the right of the chair where the ground feeder rests. That didn't leave a spot for me to put my book, my tea, my cross-stitch projects. So another table was in order. I wanted to sit and watch the squirrels to the left when they feed on the tree stump.

Mainly, changing where I sat was a function of sunlight. It's at my right side and back, instead of my left side and front. So that left the south side of the deck free for the organization of plants.

By the time I got the plants outside, due to chilly weather, they'd spent a couple of weeks in a box and in the sink getting watered.

They were leggy and a bit awkward. I wound up losing three of them. But that taught me when I order this year, delivery can't be until May 1st. April weather is just too dicey and I need to be able to put these out within a week of arrival. 

The rest recovered nicely. 

The wave petunias, grown to cascade over the side of a pot, lasted until early September. I have to quit ordering primrose. As pretty as they are, they do not blossom for me and don't do well in pots on my deck. They are akin to pansies in that they don't like hot weather.

I don't like the strawberries I ordered last year, but I can't remember what the name of the ones were I ordered the year before. Maybe I should forego strawberries as the squirrels get to them before me. The geraniums were a bit leggy when I put them outside, but a trimming back made them nice and bushy.

This was a nice arrangement. The birdbath, however, was not used nearly as much as it had been in previous years. I don't think creatures felt safe. One of the issues is that the gutter is bent to the south of the door and when it rains heavily, water cascades onto the deck and anything below it. I'd move flowers to that section of the deck, but they would be drenched and probably destroyed by rain. I have a problem, as it is, with squirrels digging in my plants.

I think I need to move the birdbath closer to the deck steps this year. I also have to put the pot on the railing up onto something to allow air to circulate under the pot. I don't have enough of those plastic things I use under deck pots. I have had them for years and don't know if I can find anything like that anymore.

The moonflower, datura, which goes in the pot by the steps, didn't do as well as in the past. The alyssum did wonderfully, but the moonflower just didn't grow very big. I missed the giant trumpet blossoms and the intoxicating fragrance. The area around this pot has been cleared, but this year, landscape fabric and mulch is going down in this location. It's near the air conditioning unit and that area is going to be cleared so the unit is free of weeds for air circulation.

So the temperatures are going to be in the mid to upper 40's this next week. The back yard is a swamp. I'm itching for spring to get here and for flowers and plants to brighten the yard again.

Beverage:  Assam tea

Deb