puttering around....

Yesterday afternoon, and again today, when I got home, I've been strolling around in the yard, looking at things that make me smile. How can you look at a clump of brilliantly blooming, bright yellow daffodils and not :-)?  And looking at hyacinths, peeking up from the leaf mulch, getting ready to open up.  Forsythia beginning to show signs of life...

While I was meandering, I notice all these wee little wild onions that try to take over. With tiny little leaves, no bigger than a sewing thread, coming up out there amongst the things I have planted and nurtured, encouraged to grow and bloom. Onions - not so much. So I've been out with my shovel and an empty flower pot, digging them up. I'm pretty sure: a) it is never ending and b) the onions will win.

But I'm planning to put up a good fight. I've dug, bending over, and squatting, or sitting in the bed, teasing them out of the ground. Trying to not break off those tiny little leaves, smaller than chives, attached to bulbs occasionally the size of a pin head, to get the whole thing up - so they won't multiply and spread.  Really hard to pull up, unless you dig up under them to get the dirt loose enough for the wiry little leaves to not break loose from the bulb and cause the bulb to seem to vanish in the hard clay, so they will come back again.  Tedious, but also very gratifying when I get a big pile of them to put in the trash guaranteeing they will not ever need digging up again at my house!

The ones I have gotten up are in that new bed I planted a couple of years ago, along the front edge of the house, where they probably were all along. But they need to understand they are no longer welcome in that location.