it was a reaaallly ....

....productive day, even though I did not actually do anything that shows, for demonstrating accomplishment. I swept most of my house this morning, as the plants that over-wintered indoors just recently relocated. It was raining recently, and I put most of the green things out to get a good drink, thinking it is warm enough to not have to bring them back in. There was a lot of stuff left when they moved back outside, in addition to miscellaneous deceased bugs and multiple dust bunnies surreptitiously lurking.

Then I went to Kmart garden shop and bought plants. Several different kinds of tomatoes, to put out in the garden spot. When I started digging, I was thinking of the year my parents brought me a load of cow droppings for my birthday. A hilarious gift, for sure, to enrich my little plot, adding manure to make good dirt. When the house was built, all the top soil was scraped away, leaving nothing but rock-hard clay. The little spot in the back yard I have tiller-ed, enriched, mulched, fertilized, planted, nurtured for years has the nicest black dirt. And a huge community of earth worms. You cannot dig, turn over a spade full of dirt, without unearthing a wiggler or two. I've always thought that earthworms are the sign of good healthy dirt. They won't live someplace that isn't and they, by doing what they do, make it richer and more organic.

When I go in the garden shop, and plan to buy the ones in the little multi-plant pack, I always peer around and under the leaves to search out the ones with an extra plant or two. Whether it is vegetables or blooming annuals, I am always hopeful for a little lagniappe. An extra plant or two that the growers did not pinch when they put several seeds in each cell. I found several of these in the tomatoes, so in addition to digging holes to put ten in the garden, I have six more that I put in pots to grow a bit more before they permanently relocate.

Also bought some portulaca to go in the strawberry pot, put a bright pink geranium in a big pot by the front door where it will bloom and make me smile all summer. Planted two little six-packs of marigolds in the edge of the bed where the daisies are laughing out loud.  I must have pulled up hundreds of weeds out of the beds and in the lawn, where they are: growing like weeds. Thanks to all the recent spring rains, that we will be even more appreciative of come mid-summer when things start to look parched.