The Easter Bunny did it

Since my last post, things were looking rosy outside. The snow melted, the sun shone. I took off the lawnmower blades (actually, my neighbor did) took them to Big Tool Box while they sharpened them while I waited, I changed the oil, mowed the grass (highest setting). That was last Sunday. The tulips and daffodils were standing erect again, having shrugged off the surprise snowstorm, and then the Easter Bunny paid me an early visit this morning. Those poor yellow tulips above don't look quite as happy as the day before.

They were looking pretty perky then. Ah well, fleeting beauty. That's spring in the Rockies. Our local garden guru gave us a "to-do this weekend" list in the newspaper. He says:

• Prune hybrid tea roses, butterfly bush, and grapes as needed


• Fork organic matter into vegetable beds


• Top-dress perennial beds with compost


• Aerate and fertilize lawns

I've pruned the roses (well, some of them); the butterfly bush seems to be squashed behind the Rose of Sharon and I'm not sure what to do about it; fork organic matter? Not today. Same with top-dressing. The aerator guy came last week and it's really too soon to fertilize the grass no matter what the guru says. Do I want to kill myself mowing that verdant lawn? Do I really want to encourage it this soon? I don't think so. Besides I've seen his garden. He has no lawn, well, maybe two long strips.

While I was mowing last weekend, I checked on the Nepeta "Six Hills Giant" which I cut back drastically a few weeks ago. This plant has been growing next to the driveway for years. See that crack in the concrete? Six Hills likes to throw runners out there too, so it looks like I grow flowers in the middle of the driveway. When my son was a teenager he drove over it every day to get his car in the garage. He said he always enjoyed that since it smelled so good after he crushed it. A teenager noticed that? It gladdened my heart and it obviously didn't hurt the nepeta in the long run.

Before the Easter Bunny came, here is the freshly mowed front lawn complete with aerator plugs. In the background is a Flowering Quince (japonica) that I see I should have trimmed last spring after it bloomed. Too much Quince, not enough Flowering.

Well, must go, I have an appointment with an Easter Bunny (ears first)!

CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF SHOWERS..

That's what they said last evening, but it was a rather shocking surprise this morning to find that 4-6 inches had sneakily fallen overnight. Even the weather man was surprised.
When I got home from work this afternoon I had to check on the new bulb bed I planted last fall under the little amur maple. No sign of the daffodils that had been perky the day before but I can see the hyacinths are tucked in nicely, and even a tulip or two.
Off the back patio everything is sporting a crown of snow. You can see from the flagstones that the snow didn't stick to surfaces that had been warmed considerably by our 60-plus degree days we've enjoyed recently. The guy that aerates the lawn was supposed to come today. He's rescheduled for next Monday but the forecast is...cloudy with a chance of showers.

Back to reality

I knew I should have put this pot away last fall. Not sure why I didn't.

This one is history too.

I should have put away the garden hoses also. I can barely see them under all the pods from the Honey Locust tree.

The wood pile is falling over, the snow blasted the green paint off that wicker chair, and yes, more seed pods all over the lower patio.

Hmm, last fall this was a twig settee, now it's a pile of sticks with an upside down birdhouse (the raccoons did it) smack in the middle of it. Okay, I'm not really very sad about all this. The blue pot was a garage sale purchase a few years ago and it came complete with a crack. I always positioned it on the pedestal with the damage toward the back. Its demise was only a matter of time. Same for the twig settee, it's been "planted" in a flower bed for 15 years, ever since it got too unstable to sit on. As for the clay pot, I do that every year, no surprises there. And the darn pods...actually I wouldn't have had the heart to post these pictures if I hadn't already started cleaning them up. The trash man took away 8 of the 55-gallon-size leaf bags full of them this morning.

Being a lazy gardener I never clean up in the fall. It's just my nature. All the grasses and plants wither away wherever they happen to grow and die. And come spring it makes for the most desolate-looking landscape. So when I get started in the garden the change is utterly amazing and I feel like I really accomplished something!

The thrill of seeing green growing things again makes it all worthwhile. This pussywillow languished in an unsuitable location for a few years and never grew more than a couple feet tall until I finally moved it to a better spot near my kitchen window. Now it's one of the first things to bud in Spring and has become a tall tree.

So back to reality, and that means back to the garden!

Home again, home again...

And suddenly it's spring at home! After warming my tootsies in sunny Mexico for a few weeks I came home to find that all the huge snow mounds had melted, my street was no longer a one-lane plowed track, and the tulips and daffodils were poking up. I swear I brought the warm weather home with me. Also lots of memories of Mexico. And a new life bird.

I'd stopped to admire this Royal Poinciana tree on the way to breakfast one morning. This is not something I ever see at home. I thought the flowers looked like tulips until I looked at it closely. The individual blossoms are actually orchid-shaped but they grow in large clusters. While I was taking it all in, this guy landed.

This is a Golden-Cheeked Woodpecker. Wow, what a bird! As soon as I spotted the red and yellow head I knew it was a life bird for me. And since I've misplaced my Mexican bird book somewhere I had to immediately head off to the American Book Store and look it up in their Mexican field guide. Such excitement. I treated myself to this great Pina Colada for breakfast.


And then I had the entree. I did gain six pounds while I was gone. I made sure to eat a lot of fish for dinner but I think that was probably offset by the lovely breakfasts like this, and perhaps the Pina Coladas.

Mostly, I hung out on the balcony and watched the ocean and the people on the beach, and read books. I brought nine along and had to scrounge a few more left behind by departing tourists.

I did get up occasionally and move around. On one of those occasions I visited a new botanical gardens which was started two years ago. Look at all those bouganvilleas. They make the lone plant that I winter over look pathetic. The hacienda below is the main building for the gardens. It not only houses an impressive collection of botanical books to peruse but also a restaurant and a gift shop (they didn't take credit cards which is probably a good thing for me). The owners live in half of the second floor. Nice set-up.

There's something about gauze curtains blowing in the breeze that speaks to me. Add flowers, birds, the ocean, and warm weather and I'm in tropical heaven.

So, back to reality. It's a good thing we now have an extra hour of daylight so now that I'm finally caught up at work, I can spend some time in my shattered garden in the evenings. Then catch up on all your blogs. And dream of lazy days in Mexico!

Gone to Mexico

"See you" in March!

Packing flowers

After two months of wearing snow boots, today I wore flipflops around the house getting my feet accustomed to them again. In a few days I'm off to Mexico for a couple of weeks. Normally on the day I fly out, I've been up half the night before trying on clothes to see if they fit and then frantically stuffing things into my suitcase. This year I decided to pack a few days in advance. What a concept!
I've been leisurely hauling the "Mexico stuff" up from the cedar closet in the basement and deciding what size I am this year. I have a whole range of sizes and patterns to choose from. I hardly ever wear a floral print at home, but I'm not staying home. I get a kick out of dressing like a typical tourist. It's almost like going to a costume party and I actually have worn some of these clothes as costumes at Halloween. Of course, you won't find clothing like this in a Mexican department store. Most Mexican women dress like "norteamericanas" - they wouldn't be caught dead in this apparel. I'm perfectly happy to join the throngs of those who look like tourists, because I am one! And there's something about being surrounded by all the tropical colors - flaming bouganvilliea cascading over sun splashed walls, red and orange and yellow hibiscus, a canopy of yellow primavera overhead - that makes my usual blue jeans and boring white blouses a sacrilege.


The hard part is figuring out how to pare down the packing. I know there are women who throw on their Travelsmith reversible dress and hit Europe for two weeks with only an overnighter to haul around, but I can't conceive of that. On the other hand, do I need 8 pairs of capris for a 16 day trip? I don't know, I can't decide. Will 6 pairs of shoes be enough, or too much? After I return home each year I make an attempt to write down what I wore so I'll have guidelines for the next time. Each year I misplace the list. Well, I have a few days to decide, rather than the normal few hours I've given myself in the past. What isn't negotiable are the 6 or 8 novels I'll bring, a couple of bird guides, and my binoculars. That must be what's weighing down my suitcase, not all those flowery clothes!

Silver trees

How about this beautiful forest of silver trees? Actually, it was "Jack Frost" on my garage door windows. When I backed out this morning it was 6 below zero and as I idled in the driveway waiting for the car to warm up, I glanced up and saw this fantasyland of "trees" spread across all four windows, reflecting a neighbor's house and drifts of snow in the background. So the "trees" aren't real, but the cold and snow is. I heard Punxsutawney Phil didn't see his shadow today so spring is right around the corner. We don't really believe that here. There's been some discussion about using a prairie dog to get a local reading, but they're probably all snowed into their burrows. Meanwhile I've taken to clipping fake birds onto my flowering maple which is wintering indoors. This makes me think of warmer weather.
I'm not sure where all the real outdoor birds have gone. Lately the only customers I've had at the feeders are squirrels. But I did see a large flock of robins the other day. I happened to be looking out the front window when I saw about 50 of them land in a tree across the street. I watched them for awhile and suddenly a truck out on the main road backfired and robins exploded out of tree after tree. There were probably 150. Though most robins head south like sensible birds we always have a population of them who over-winter. I think I saw the whole crowd.
robin photo credit

Oh, my darling....

....Clementine.

I love these little Cuties and for a long time I thought I was eating the same tangerines we used to pick off the trees in Florida when we were kids. Then someone told me they were not tangerines at all, but a variety of Mandarin orange. Well, they fooled me. Google tells me that clementines started to be imported to the U.S. from France a few years back after a freeze wiped out most of the Florida orange crop. They caught on big and now they're popular enough to be grown in California. Right after the freeze hit California's crop a couple of weeks ago, I heard that citrus prices would go up. Sure enough, the Cuties that I paid $5.95 a crate for last week are $6.95 this week.



The price won't deter me. Five pounds of easy peel, seedless, supersweet "tangerines" means I can throw a few in my lunchbag to take to work. They may not replace Godiva chocolates anytime soon but while they're in season they'll be my darling clementines.

Gala, not Red Delicious

Okay, so ice storms are making a skating rink of the Midwest and Texas; there's snow in Malibu; 100 mph winds swept across Europe; in Colorado we still live in a moonscape of rutted ice and mountains of snow; but I need a new swimsuit. I can't think of any worse horror than trying on swimwear in the dressing room of the local department store, so I've ordered several online. As they arrive, I can try them on in my walk-in closet where there are no security cameras and alternately laugh out loud, or cry over not staying on the South Beach Diet. The rejects get dropped back in the self-serve box at the post office, the winner heads to Mexico. This black-and-white print was a front-runner until it arrived. According to Lands' End, potential bathing suit buyers fit into these shape categories: triangle, inverted triangle, rectangle, or star. The star apparently means you have a perfect body (you're 20 years old). Sorry, Lands' End, I am obviously an apple and you don't have a swimsuit for me.
This one has potential - it looks kind of like a maternity suit. The old-fashioned kind, not the belly-baring ones the Hollywood stars wear. Though Roaman's classifies their customers' bodies as hourglass, oval, or triangle. Still no apples. It also says to hand wash. I guess that doesn't mean throw it in the washing machine, does it?
I ordered this one in turquoise. A leap of faith since the view wouldn't change on the website and I can't tell what the color really looks like. This one says it lengthens your legs. I have plenty of leg. I want one that says "Remember those c-sections you had in the '70s when they cut your stomach muscles? This suit is for you." There are no bathing suit descriptions that say that. "Takes off a full inch!" is as far as they'll go.
At Just My Size, they say this yellow one trims tummy, hides hips and "flatters all figure shapes". Except apple. It also "plays up your prettiest curves". That would be my profile; my left side is best.
The dark blue one has little anchors all over it. It arrived icy-cold after the UPS man dropped it on my porch where it sat all day in 8 degrees Fahrenheit. I had to warm it up before I could try it on. It says it has built-in midriff control that "lets you relax". I'd like to, really. But first I have to find a bathing suit.

Hazardous beauty

Not here, fortunately for us. This picture is from St. Louis. Ice storms are not in our weather repertoire in Colorado and I'll take 2 or 3 feet of snow any day rather than this thick coating of ice. On the national news this evening they showed an overloaded tree drop its icy coating onto the driveway below; it sounded like a giant chandelier shattering. The homeowners were scooping great shovelsful off the pavement like so much broken glass. As dangerous as this phenomenon is - power lines down, trees broken, streets like skating rinks - it is beautiful, like some fairytale crystal garden. My daughter in Tulsa tells me it was 65 degrees at midnight and the ice storm started there the next morning. My brother-in-law in the desert in California is freezing at 32 degrees. I think Mother Nature is having a hissy fit.

In Colorado, the weekly snow arrived on Friday but only in fluffy flurries. It was a cinch to scoop a few inches off the driveway. But only if you were bundled in more layers than you can easily move around in. The temperature has been hovering around zero for a few days and we find ourselves looking forward to mid-week with a promise of 30 degrees. That's only fair as we dropped 60 degrees in 24 hours to get where we are now. In the meantime, the cupboard doors below the kitchen sink will stay open to keep the water pipes next to the outside wall warm enough so they don't freeze. That's a hazard waiting to happen, and it's not beautiful.

A sea of white

Snowstorm number three arrived like clockwork at the end of the week, but this time with only seven inches of snow. Add that to the two previous storms in the last couple of weeks and you get the scene above. Not much curbside parking going on in this town! That's my next-door neighbor's work vehicle. He was off last week but needs to go to work on Monday so a bunch of us painstakingly helped him dig a path just wide enough for him to pull out of those snowbanks. I don't think we're going to see the street again till March!
These are my across-the-street neighbors. We didn't have a block party this summer but have made up for it by having a lot of snow-shoveling gatherings. It looks like this all over town, and has made for some interesting rituals. Like don't turn down your street until you make sure no one is coming from the other direction, there's no room for two-way traffic. Be sure to make a sharp right-angle turn into your driveway or you'll end up in a snow bank. At the supermarket, we leave our full grocery carts outside the door and go retrieve our cars and load the bags curbside. The parking lots are full of snowy ruts and icy chunks that aren't user-friendly for grocery carts.

I did start taking my Christmas decorations down. The one above will be staying out for awhile. That's one of a set of three little Christmas trees in big green pots that line my sidewalk. I put large red bows on them, and this one is just visible. Inside, it's pretty chaotic too. I never seem to be able to make a clean sweep of putting away the Christmas things. Some things are back down in the basement, a lot of it is spread across the dining room table, and there are fake evergreen needles all across the living room carpet. Not sure why a fake tree sheds almost as much as the real thing. Today I decided I needed a few more of those big plastic storage containers to help me get a handle on organizing all the holiday decor. By the time I navigated the WalMart parking lot and made my way home, I was out of the notion. But there's always tomorrow, and the promise of more snow at the end of the week should keep me inside finishing up on my sea of Christmas clutter!

Christmas past

I haven't taken down the Christmas tree, and the outside lights are destined to stay up till three feet of snow melts. Then maybe I can locate the extension cords and the all-weather outlet where everything is plugged in. Until then, the reindeer will continue to graze and light the night. They have managed to melt the snow around them, I can see their bodies again. Underneath them I'm imagining a different drift in the spring, the tulips and daffodils I planted in the fall. For the time being, the bulbs are safely insulated in their bed, and even the hardiest squirrels won't be digging through all that snow for a winter snack.

Inside, I'm still puttering away getting Christmas sorted out. When we were kids, my mother never took down the tree until the Feast of the Epiphany on January 6th, I sometimes use that as my excuse nowadays! Back then, my sisters and I were thrilled to find Ginny dolls under the tree.

Made by the Vogue Doll Company, they were little girl dolls in a pre-Barbie world. And we had plenty of them! Our father built a room length dollhouse against one wall of our big bedroom and we played with our Ginny dolls for hours and hours. None of the dolls survived our childhood and I have no idea what happened to them, but this year I found some replica Ginny dolls at Tuesday Morning. Who would've thought? I bought one for each doll-playing sister for this Christmas 50 years later.
The brunette doll for my brunette sister.......
And the blondie for my blonde sister. Christmas may be over but a piece of the past has been resurrected!

Blue skies

So we had Round 2 of the Holiday Blizzard on Thursday night and all day Friday, but this time the winds didn't howl, so it was merely a storm. By the time it was over we had another thirteen inches of snow. This towering Blue Spruce is across the street. Notice my neighbor's trash piled below. Not sure when we'll get pickup again. Today, the day after the storm, the skies are blue and sunny, and the trees look gorgeous glistening with snow.
My neighbor's snowblower bogged down with this very wet and heavy snow so I started shoveling my driveway by hand. The snow kept sticking to the blade so I tried out that trick I'd heard of spraying cooking oil on it and it worked. I was very surprised. A few neighbors borrowed the spray can too and now the odor of olive oil is redolent in the air.
Out in the back yard, I can no longer get to my feeders, so I scattered some seed and peanuts close to the house. Some Black-billed Magpies were my first customers and I caught their tracks in the snow on my camera.
Even more cool is this imprint of a Magpie's wing and body he left when he landed on top of the snow to grab a peanut. They're a big bird with a wingspan of about two feet. Looks like those fossils you see imbedded in stone, doesn't it?
Much smaller birds grace some holiday dishes that I love using at Christmas. Don't you love the feel of beautiful bone china? The heft of it is very pleasing and the translucence always amazes me. Forgive me for carrying on. Years ago I worked in the China and Silver department of a May Company store and I've never quite gotten over it. The House Finch above is common at my feeders and the Eastern Bluebird below never will be. But its cousin the Western Bluebird will be back with the blue of the summer skies.