Broken Promises

I said I would show you the herb garden next. I lied. Thing is, there's another project in the middle of herb garden, and it's not cooperating. So instead, you get to see my philodendron. As usual, there is no "before" photo, but that's because in order to get to "before," one has to go back to early January, before hell froze over. This philodendron was huge. Huge. I had to cut it back twice last year just to be able to reach my water knob. I couldn't see out of the window over it. There was more wrought iron stuff between in and the house that I didn't know about until the leaves froze. And died. And got hacked off. But it's a philly, and it gamely started growing back. In the meantime, I noticed that wate coming off the roof was washing away the soil in one particular spot. My solution: dump more rock on it.

See the leaf on the left touching the ground? That's the only leaf that made it through the freeze... the last leaf that was there when I moved in. I named it Mike. Minnesota hockey fans know why (and no, I won't be cutting it off anytime soon). The rest of you will just think, "oh, I see she's still naming inanimate objects." Which I am.

I fully expect my philly to be as big and tall and even fuller by the end of the summer than it was last fall. At that point, I probably won't be able to see the nice rock, so I'd best enjoy it now.

Well, Would You Look at the Time...

Is it April already? Has it really been four months since I've posted anything?

Ooops. Sorry.

I shall attempt to make up for it with a series of fascinating and reasonably-spaced accounts of the various Projects I've been working on. Will that help? I'll start with one I just finished today. I didn't think to take any "before" pictures, because really... who would want to take a picture of THAT? If it were pretty enough for a picture, I wouldn't've ripped it out and dugged it up and redoned it, right? Well, what I did was take out all the weeds, spider plants (which grow like weeds around here), and dead trees in little pots that didn't make it through the freeze (that's right - freeze. It got down below 20 for two or three nights in a row in January)... the sections of rusty iron fence I found beneath the dead plants... the odd terra cotta pot laying on its side in the dirt... I took all that out from the corner of the back yard and replaced it with this:

The bushes are Photinia. Their new growth is a nice, dark red. Other than that, they are pretty bushlike. I put some of that deep red volcanic rock around them, and a row of zinnias in front of them on the fence side. There really wasn't enough room to put them along the house wall, too.

And here are some of my friends who helped me with this project:

Of course I can't thank everyone; there simply isn't enough time. I'll have to save some of it for the next Project: herb garden.