Spring in bloom

St. Gianna Molla, pray for us.  Today is her feast day.  She's one of my 'new favorite' saints.

So here's what I've been up to instead of blogging:

• doing 5 days worth of dishes- yesterday
  
• little (and I mean little) school with Rose
• minimal amount of laundry...all clean and in baskets

But more importantly:

I didn't get a shot of the front yard.  I put quite a few plants up there, too, although it still looks a bit empty.  Thurs the nice weather came in, and I went to a friend's house and got a lot of perennials.  It was great.  I planted most of them Friday.  Monday I spent the whole day moving all the lava rocks in the area by the back door, and replacing it with dirt, and my shade loving perennials.  I know you can't really tell, but there's hosta and lilly of the valley growing in the first picture.  I bought the cheap fencing because I need something to keep the kids out of it.  Here's really hoping it works.  I'm just soo glad the rocks are gone.  

I was furiously planing some strawberry plants late last night, because I thought it was going to storm all night, and today.  We got hardly any rain!  When I woke up to cloudy skies, and cool breezes, I impetuously grabbed my hoe again, and headed down to plant my garden.  I got another row of spinach, lettuce, zucchini and peas and some cukes planted before the sprinkles got heavy enough to make me damp.  I also threw some seeds in my herb garden for chamomile, dill, and onions. 

I think I like my herb garden most right now (picture 2).  A lot of the plants are perennials, and they give that instant gratification, for having something in bloom.  Lots of green there.   And I love the phlox. It's one of my favorite flowers.  I guess why I love it is because it's so neat, and together, and there's so much room.  That allows me to experiment, and be a bit artistic about where I may place things, or what I plant.  Unlike the veggie garden, where I am all about using up every tiny inch to cram in as many plants as possible to get a bountiful yield from our space.

Speaking of...We're trying something a little bit different this year with our veggie garden, which is very fun.  It's a variation of square foot gardening, and companion gardening.  I've divided the garden in four plots, and I'm going to cram all the plants in these four squares, instead of doing rows.  I'm still eager to plant, and not downtrodden by the abundant weeds or the summer's heat, so we'll see how this turns out.  I just need to find a way to keep those pesky squirrels away.

I was almost looking forward to the rain today.  It would've forced me to stay home and clean!  I did do, like I said, the bare minimum to get by.  My house looks like a tornado hit it.  Yet we found a reason to go to Lowes tonight.  Ahh...feels like summer.