The First Mowing of the Year and Garden Cleanup

Another mostly sunny day today. We hit a high of 65 degrees and I had plans! Garden clean-up was the name of the game today. As you can see, it is still very wet in the big garden, especially in a few areas. But the grass is growing like crazy so I went ahead and did the first mowing of the year. Before I could get started I had to go around and pick up fallen fir and ash branches. The March 21st snowstorm sent a lot of limbs and branches crashing down. I ended up with a nice size pile in the corner of the garden and still haven't cleaned up the fallen debris in the actual garden yet.

With the help of my Dad and his chainsaw we also tackled the mess directly outside of the garden. My lovely tall pussy willow tree in the corner of the garden took a pretty bad hit in the snow. It was covered with silver catkins when the snow fell. The extra surface area allowed the snow to pile on and snap- the limbs broke and fell against the deer fence. We ended up removing 3 of the 5 trunks of the willow.

All cleaned up but a much smaller tree. I did save one nice branch from our pile of cut up willow and stuck it in the mud right next to the original tree. My hope is that it will root and grow to fill in some of the empty space.

We worked for over four hours today and ended up hot, sweaty, and with two full truck loads of tree limbs.



After I got back to the house I noticed that the first of my Sweet Pea "Sugar 'N Spice" have started to sprout. I have 5 plants up in both of the two bowls.