Signs of spring

The last two weekends have involved yard work. It’s amazing how a simple thing like mowing down some border plants (they grow better when they’ve been zapped) leads to all sorts of other stuff. First you see all the fronds in the yard, so you rake ’em up. There’s a big bunch of grass raked up with the fronds. Next thing you know, you’ve got the generator out of mothballs, a blower plugged in, and then there’s an enormous pile of leaves and clippings burning. And what passes for a front lawn at FAR Manor is a little longer than the house and no more than 15 feet deep. Mrs. Fetched saw what I was doing and started in on the other side of the driveway (which parallels the front of the house). Thus does a 15 minute job run all afternoon.

The back yard is a bit bigger, and has been neglected for quite a while. I finally got tired of looking out the bathroom window at a bunch of sticks and twigs on the ground, got out the rakes & blower again, pulled up a zillion little pine trees (Dad helped with that quite a bit) and made a border with some logs that I will probably never get around to splitting. This side will be the yard, that side is the woods. The leaves I threw in the dog run area, also known as the moonscape.

There’s not a lot of lawn out back, which has a lot to do with the trees that nearly took over. Since some of them were leaning toward the house, we had some people come out to cut them down. Others we had a lumber company pay us to take away (they wanted the pines, which had pine beetles in them anyway). But I digress.

Warm days have brought the potted herbs outside until tomorrow afternoon (it’s supposed to get chilly again tomorrow night). I’m hearing the frogs (a spring kigo for haiku writers) peeping in nearby ponds or creeks. I can’t seem to get grass to grow right (hey, less mowing that way), but lots of other stuff just comes up on its own.

Wild onions in the yard. I added some (domestic) chives to my potted herbs, so I haven’t need to harvest them. Besides, with the dogs running around loose... yuck.


Daffodils on the roadside. They’re hardy little boogers; they grow alongside most of the roads around here and you can see them down in the woods. A cheerful reminder that winter is almost over.


The pansies are also hardy; Mrs. Fetched keeps some out through the winter and they’re still hanging around. I’ll remember to get pictures. Maybe.