Working in the Garden

During my month at home, in between trips, I have been working in the garden when the weather permits.  I wanted to clean out all the flower beds, and then lay down Preen, a granular product which keeps weeds from germinating.  It's not an herbicide; it simply keeps weed seeds from sprouting for about three months.  Unfortunately, because of the unusually warm days that we had in the first half of March, there were already weeds galore.  I had to pull those out before putting down the Preen.  I don't know if I got them all, or if I pulled them all out entirely by the roots.  However, hopefully when I return home in May, my flower beds will not be fields of weeds, and I will have less work to do when I begin my springtime gardening in earnest.

I still had one flower bed to do, a long stretch that runs along the border of my property.  The area is prone to flooding when it rains, and it has been too swampy to work there.  Looking at the long-range weather forecast, yesterday was going to be the only dry day until my departure.  So, even though it was chilly, only in the 40s F, I went out to finish my work. 

You can see the Preen that I had spread, rather heavily, on the flower bed.  It had dried out, but perhaps you can see in the photo that the neighbor's back yard was still a bit swampy. I also raked up the twigs, bits of walnut shells and pieces of bark that littered my back yard. After several hours of work, I declared the early gardening project to be done.  

It's a good thing that I finished yesterday, because when I woke up this morning, this is what I saw!

In spite of the fact that the overnight low hovered above the freezing mark, the precipitation came down as snow and lightly coated the ground with white.  By Tuesday the temperature will climb up into the 60s, but rain is expected.  I am really looking forward to the warmth and sunshine of Mexico!  Soon!