As promised, here it is Friday morning and I’m “Dallying.” Managed to rip out the old river and am now contemplating the new layout. Should be able to contemplate for at least a week before I actually start moving dirt and bricks. The bathroom reno is seriously cutting into my gardening time but the shower was leaking. The huge snow load that we experienced this year has certainly recharged the ground water levels. This week we had a 24 hour rain that added to that. It also made the load of old drywall in the back of the truck much heavier when I got it to the dump. I think I paid $10 extra to dump rain water. I have this interesting phenomenon in the low part of the back garden. The rubber edging on both sides of the gravel path creates this mini lake. The beds are very wet but have no standing water but the path, between the edging, fills with water and leaves me with this little winding river between the beds. You would think that the gravel paths would allow for water to drain through more quickly. The path is a bit lower than the beds back there and renewing that gravel is part of this year’s list. The loose gravel on top does have a fairly solid limestone base under it but that type of path drains elsewhere on the property. It’s not really a problem, just a curiosity.




I spent a great deal of time and money last fall cleaning up the large beds in the backyard and covering them with mulch. I had resisted mulching them because they contain the Asparagus and I thought mulch might slow its emergence in the spring. It certainly is going to be slow this year but not because of the mulch. Lots of thin green shoots appearing through that mulch which could either be the leaves of the Autumn Crocus or the immature Garlic that has been a persistent weed in that bed. I didn’t cut the scapes off the Garlic one year and the little bulbils that developed and landed in the garden have been a scourge ever since. They don’t taste like Garlic but they don’t really look like the Crocus leaves. The thing I noticed most, was the inability of the mulch to deter the bushy tailed tree rats, (aka squirrels.) There were nice excavations all over those beds and I suspect there are now fewer Tulips than there were a couple of weeks ago or possibly they have been planting new Walnuts. Whatever they are up to, don’t they know that the mulch is supposed to deter them.

Now it’s time to answer a few of my reader’s questions. Don’t forget to check the front page of the Website for frequent short ideas for current gardening activities.