Gardening

It's time to start thinking about what to put into the garden for the summer. Every year we plant tomatos. The first year we put in over 20 plants and had a ton of tomatos. We've been progressively reducing the number of tomato plants though given that we receive way more than we know what to do with - even after giving some to the neighbors. I planted the seeds inside first and after just a few weeks they are already huge. The squash plants are doing the best from what I can tell.

I planted seeds for flowers as well. For some reason I'm really getting into flowers. I know I love peach roses. I used to have a peach minature rose as well. We planted it in the front and then trimmed it for the winter. The next year it grew to be a huge bush and is now red. I guess they had grafted the peach miniature part and when we trimmed it, it went into a regular bush. At least I get some pretty flowers out of it.

My all time favorite flower from the garden is the grape hyacinth though, with lilac being a close second. I just love the fragrance.

It's too bad that the garden vegetables aren't as fragrant. I might be more tempted to go into the garden itself and deal with it all. Instead I stand at the garden gate and pick the tomatos that are closest. My husband deals with the rest. Perhaps it is the mice that we know are in the garden. I don't want to accidentally step on one.

We'll be putting in the vegetables and the flowers next weekend, unless we see a weather report saying more snow. It's supposed to snow in a couple of days, so we didn't put them in this weekend.

Springtime in the Rockies

Yes, it snowed last Sunday and it is supposed to snow again this coming Tuesday/Wednesday. It's hard to believe. The Saturday before was 70 degrees and beautiful - it wasn't until late afternoon that the clouds started to loom and the temperatures dropped. The snow was fun... since I didn't have to drive to work in it. It was really blowing, so some places barely had an inch on the ground when other places had piles of snow feet deep. I checked the depth in some sheltered areas to try to see how much we really got, and found that we got about two feet of snow.

I'll mention now that I am not a winter fan. I don't ski, I don't ice skate (or at least very well) and I'm really not into taking my life into my own hands driving on the slippery highways. But at least this snowstorm fell on a weekend day and therefore I could stay in the house and have no worries. I did trudge outside and shoveled the walks, and ended up very sore after helping neighbors with their drives and sidewalks. My work was for naught as it snowed several more inches on my newly shoveled drive (thus requiring yet more shoveling on Monday morning before making it into work). The blizzard of 2005 was nothing like the blizzard of 2003 though - when we got over 4 feet of snow in one snowstorm. It's the only time I've heard that my work closed down. They closed down only because the police said they would ticket anyone found driving. They couldn't very well require that their employees break the law now could they?

I'm not sure how much snow we are expecting at this time for the Tuesday/Wednesday timeframe, but I'm not looking forward to having to drive in it - no matter what. I'm looking forward to late Spring/early Summer - when there isn't a chance of snow. Of course, the latest snowstorm on record (with recordable snow amounts) was June 5th! I remember it snowing in July, but it didn't stick. In any case, summer is preferable to me, even with the extreme heat we are expected to get. At least we aren't further south and dealing with 114 degrees every day.