dreaming@echonyc.com

yesterday i planted a forsythia!

now, i had to move a hydrangea bush to do it. and in relocating the hydrangea, i accidentally dug up about half a dozen lily bulbs. so the plant tally stays about the same. but the forsythia is in at last. right now it is wee, about two feet tall. it's supposed to grow to about six feet — the better to camouflage the unlovely oil pipe, the hose spigot, the electrical outlet, the meter...

it was a big day in the garden. i did all the spring cleanout in the front, to the tune of five trugs' worth. i mulched (having once again bought the wrong color mulch, and having once again decided that in the grand scheme of things it didn't really matter if my mulch was sorta swirly). and i planted the forsythia, plus two icelandic poppy "wonderland"s, a plant i loved last year, and a blue butterfly delphinium, kind of a bushy dwarf delphinium instead of the magnificent spikes you usually see.

paul was busy outside, too. a couple of weeks ago we had an enormous dead pine tree, about 60 feet tall, taken out of the no-man's land between our house and the neighbor's. paul manfully carried a bunch of the debris over to the ravine (for that is what i have decided to call the wilder side of our driveway), thanks once again to the mighty trug.

now, when the trunk of the tree was being disposed of, paul had the foresight to ask the men to cut it into big slices, about 8 inches thick. the resulting slabs are about two feet in diameter — really huge. we had no idea how we'd use them. there are about a million.

i had this idea, though, that we should provide some path for the gentlemen who read our meter and fill our oil tank. four years ago, they could bushwhack their way through the dense and ugly roses. before yesterday, they could tromp haphazardly through the bed, trampling the wild violets. now, to keep them from bruising my young and tender forsythia, they can use a path of two giant slices of wood, securely set into the ground. (they'd better.)

the hyacinth in the picture was a sad casualty of the slice-moving. it died so that my forsythia might live. amen and so be it.

the only things blooming at the moment are the daffodils, which were first to bloom and are still going strong; the hyacinths, unbelievably fragrant and royal blue except for the one pink outlier, now sadly departed; and, as of this morning, one of the eight million tulips mom planted last fall. but everything else is ready, crouching, poised to spring any minute.