gardening is hard work!

I took the day off yesterday to work in my garden. Neil got on a train at 6:30am to go to Toronto for a conference. Since I wanted the car for the day, I had to drop him off there. At that ungodly hour of the morning, on a day off.

But the good news is, that I had another bag of forget-me-nots ready for the garbage pick-up before 8:30am.

Don't get me wrong, they are a beautiful, intense little blue flower in full bloom. But as a species, they are also extremely invasive, and prolific little pains in the ass that when out of flower, can completely choke the life out of a garden. Sometimes gardening is about making hard choices and being mean to otherwise pretty little things.

Speaking of obnoxiously invasive species of plants... I bought some woad at my day trip to Richters. I understand it's invasive and persistent to the point of being declared a noxious weed (illegal to grow) in some parts of North America. But it's history as a source of blue dye that needs to be fermented in stale urine (for the ammonia) just can't be beat. :) So I could be pulling my hair out in a few years over it's invasion of my garden, but we'll see. In the meantime, I should get a few interesting dye baths out of it - stay tuned.

Anyway, back to the day. I also dug up the remaining concrete porch support but had to wait for the Man to return from Toronto in the evening to lift it.

I also dug up all the crocuses from their current location - the plan there is to relocate randomly throughout the yard, add to the front garden, and give away to friends.

And edged all of one of the new garden spaces, and the veggie garden.

In between throwing the ball a billion and one times for the dog. I swear that creature was on some kind of Energizer-bunny battery....he just kept going and going. The routine went something like this - throw the ball, put the shovel in the ground and heave, throw the ball, bend down to pick up the grass and bang it off, throw the ball, heave the grass in the wheelbarrow, throw the damned ball, start all over again, where banging the dirt off the underside of the grass was occassionally relieved by picking crocus bulbs out, throwing the ball, and heaving the bulbs into nearby bucket.

If it had been a stick that fascinated him, I might have gotten a break once in awhile for a bout of chewing on it.

Maybe that's why I'm falling asleep at my desk today - the ball throwing. Not the massive amounts of digging, mind you - it's the ball throwing that's done me in.

Karen