GARDEN EXPLODES

It has been almost a week since I posted and my ribs are feeling better. In fact I spent some time outside yesterday digging weeds and dandelions out between the flagstone walks and the brick walks. We have brick around the front and around the side to the shed and they connect up to the deck so Harv. can just easily roll on the deck. The flagstone goes from the stone steps off the deck around the side flower bed and then up the side yard to the front lawn. That one is a walk to nowhere but you need something there. I wasn't sure how I would feel today but felt fine.

I bought 4 baskets last week at Aldis. They were a bargain. Large size baskets for 5.99 each except not too much choice. The ones I did get are great for our partly sunny/mostly shade backyard. I did not empty the baskets that line the fence before we left last year like I usually do but because of the surgery I did not and there they were. They had survived the winter in good shape and the earth still in them. I went to our local store and bought a flat of various flowers, 1 large begonia because I liked the color and some hanging vines. I bought a large bag of Miracle Gro potting soil and today I went out and filled the baskets with a variety of flowers. The nice thing is I could mix the flowers and add the trailing vines like you only get in the very expensive baskets. They are lined up like soldiers along the sunny end of the deck and I will leave them there for a week or two until they start to take off. We have 8 hangers along the fence where I hang baskets to add color to all the green. I also filled an old shoe and 2 of the Down Under Pots where you plant the flowers in the bottom and they fill out and climb up the pots. I have had one for quite a few years when they first came out and then at a house sale I found a beautiful blue glased one for 5.00. It had never been used. I believe I paid 25.00 for the plain clay one at the botanic Gardens when they were first out.

I took some pics of the deck garden, the side yard and my rhubarb. We love rhubarb Harv and I and it is so expensive to buy the stalks - like gold. the only place I can buy it frozen is in Florida. Stores here do not have it. Last year my daughter was driving along and saw a sign "free rhubarb". It was in cartons to just take. She bought it home and planted some in her sunny garden area and I tried some here in the little garden off the stone steps. We had to remove a large tree last year that had roots pushing up the large stone slab steps and the deck. They drilled it right down but I kept removing sawdust and putting in new soil but wasn't sure what would happen. Well it is growing. I am so proud of my little garden and hope I get enough to make a strawberry rhubarb pie this year. If I get enough I will freeze it.

I also showed pics of my shade garden with all my ferns, including maidenhair fern which is one of my favorites. I have a large pink bleeding heart down there and a birdbath that needs the top put back on. It is cement and too heavy for me. I also took a pic of two evergreen trees that I just love. don't know what kind they are but very airy and pretty. I buy a hibiscus tree every year and picked up that yesterday also. The two pieces of cement do not look very pretty but saves me having to pick up the tree every day out of the garden and haul it back onto the deck. You do what you gotta do.