Landscaping

Well it looks like my roses survived the hard freezes we had at the beginning of this month. I spent time outside today clearing away winter debris - leaves, branches, left-over dead growth from last year that needed clipping out. Under all that garbage I could see the beginnings of new growth on the roses - some that had frozen but some that had come on since our last freeze and looked healthy. In the same flowerbed there's another plant - I don't know what it was called but it's a silvery foliage plant - that I put in last summer. I clipped off the old dead stuff from the winter, cleared away the leaves and found new growth coming up. I'm really excited - I love plants like that - that are perennials and come back every year. There's still work to be done in that flowerbed and more in others. However it was so neat to see the new growth and realize the roses had survived. (that's actually a big deal because I'm not one to heavily mulch and "winterize" plants - I tend to just let leaves and stuff accumulate to keep them warm which I then clear out the following spring). I'm sure there's a spiritual analogy to make from that but right now I can't express it.

I also put in 6 cherry shrubs that I'm hoping will produce fruit in a couple of years - and a forsythia. I have 3 more forsythia's to plant - just need to decide exactly where to put them. The cherry shrubs (which right now just look like twigs) are near my full-grown cherry tree - I'm hoping they will help to pollinate it so that I will get fruit off that as well. The boys dug the holes for what I planted today. Son1 still wants to get a garden in also but the tiller's not working well enough to till it up yet. We also burned branches that we picked up out of the yard and mowed a good portion of it. There's still another hour's worth of mowing to do I'm sure.

My peach trees are blooming, the plum trees have been - maybe I'll see some fruit off them as well. We'll have to wait and see - the weather might have killed them off. I'm seeing bumble bees around - around the dandelions and the lilacs - the latter have not bloomed this spring so far.