299/365

Last year, I enjoyed gardening and lawn care, I think mostly because it was exciting to do those things for the first time. Sure, I value growing my own food, and the eco-friendliness of maintaining a lawn and garden. Still, I think I enjoyed it mostly for the novelty factor. I grew vegetables and mowed the lawn, sure, but I didn't plant anything new, I didn't remove anything that I didn't want. I didn't really change anything from the way it had been given to me when I bought the place. I was content to just let pop up whatever popped up, and maintain it as it was.

This summer has already been quite different--and it's not even June.

I am absolutely in love with gardening, lawn care, and my back yard.* Despite recent weeding stories, I am having a ton of fun out there on every sunny day. I like mowing the lawn; I like watering my flower and vegetable boxes; I like seeing the new plants poke their heads out from the dirt; and now that I have my new weed puller, I kind of even like yanking dandelions (kind of). Goodness knows I love jumping in my hammock after it's all said and done.

I still haven't performed any radical changes to my yard/garden, but I have made some little tweaks to get things just the way I've decided I like them. At the end of the summer last year, I pulled away the red, crescent-shaped cement bricks that formed a half-circle flower-bed against the side of my house. I'm not fond of the industrial-looking bricks, and I put a couple flower boxes in the space instead (either this summer or next--I haven't decided yet--I also want to change those same bricks that form my fire pit to smaller, more stone-like ones). I changed the layout of my vegetables this year; I'm planting most of them in squares rather than in rows. In the next week or two, I will pull the clumped and clustered tulip bulbs from the ground so that I can rearrange them to my liking next spring. And this afternoon, I tidied up the dirt beds around my trees.

I have two maples in my front yard. Not your traditional maple--you don't generally see those out here in Alberta. These two are fairly small--they must have only been planted a year or two before I bought the house. Around the bottom of their skinny trunks is a ring of black plastic, forming a circle around each tree, which at one point had looked distinct from the lawn, but in the last two years, has overgrown with the surrounding grass. I decided I wanted to remedy that. Out again with the trowel.

Turns out there was a mix of dirt and rock bed underneath the grass. I sifted out most of the rocks--I didn't want them--and added some more dirt. Around one tree, I planted cosmos, and around the other, marigolds. That ought to pretty things up a little... and keep the grass better at bay.

My intention was only to mow the lawn and pull some more dandelions today before revelling in the hammock. Instead, I mowed, weeded, dug, and planted before finally switching gears, simply because I was thoroughly enjoying all the gardening I was doing!

As an introvert, I find this seems to be a fantastic activity to allow the brain to process... anything. As I had particularly a lot on my mind this afternoon, I think it's another reason I was so content to continue getting dirt under my nails before wanting to move on to my book and my hammock. Still, way more satisfying to spend time thinking amidst the flora under warm sunshine than amongst greasy dishes at the kitchen sink.

It's forecasted to be sunny tomorrow... what else needs doing in the yard?



* Yes, Mother--I did just say that.