Well, most of today was super. Except for the bit with the chimney fire. But OTHER than that, today was super.

Slept in (well, slept in as much as I can, knowing that Grandmom won’t leave her bedroom until we’re up, because she “doesn’t want to disturb” us.)

But more importantly spent several hours getting the garden ready for spring, which involved raking up all the leaves we’d covered the beds with, which showed that a lot of bulbs are starting to come up, and even the day lilies are starting to sprout. Also uncovered my herb garden, and was very pleased to discover that the rosemary seems to have survived the winter. So it looks like being close to the house and covered with leaves allowed it to survive in a zone colder than it normal can take.

I also see that several plants I put in last year seem to have survived the winter, but I’ll have to wait a bit more to see if others survived (including the foxglove). All in all, I’ve got a fair amount of variety right now, so the only planting I really need to do any more is fill in spaces where the occasional plant didn’t survive the winter.

Least pleasant was cleaning out the flower beds on the side of the house with the bearded irises. The greenery never quite dies back (especially when bedded down with leaves) so the beds are a nasty mess to clean up. And I can’t do a whole sale cutting back, because I’ve got spring bulbs coming up. But really, if that’s the worse I have to deal with, I’ve got nothing to complain about.

And I trimmed back most of what I’d left for “winter interest” including the dead heads and stems of the black eyed susans and purple cone flowers. So Although things look extremely bare right now, I see the bones of my garden starting to come back, and that always makes me feel good. And I thinned out the lavender. I felt like I should be doing something with all the stems I was cutting back, but into the compost they went.

We also went to Lowes, where I picked up some seeds. I’m going to try–for the umpteenth year in a row–to grow sunflowers. We’ll see how it works this year. The problem is we don’t have much full sun space (that’s an understatement) so plants like sunflowers and tea roses don’t tend to thrive. Which is too bad, because sun flowers provide food for birds (food other than what we supply in our multiple bird feeders) and because I love the smell of roses. Of course tea roses are no the most environmentally friendly flowers out there. So I should be happy that my rose bushes are thriving. But they just don’t smell the same.

So even though right now my garden looks bare and sad, I can start to picture how things are going to look, and in a month I can start bringing plants outside, and deciding what I want to put in planters on the deck.

It’s always nice to have something to look forward to.