GROWING!!

Things are growing and blooming in my yard!!

No thanks to them:

Or, to be honest, HIM:

If he isn’t breaking the doors off our grill when outside, he is opening the egg gathering doors on our chicken coop and leaving them open so that chickens can squeeze out and enjoy their freedom around our yard (their freedom including pecking anything that grows – or even doesn’t). Still, it is kind of cute when he comes running with an egg he’s gathered. Or, at least it is cute when he brings it to me rather than throwing it on the deck. Rascal. (Do people use that word? Either way, he’s a cute little rascal.)

But, on to things that are blooming:

It makes me so happy. I know I’ve said it before, but it is true.

I’ll admit, most of our yard remains rather bare, and much of it is covered with the dead grass clippings that Mike has spread out around our flower beds to keep weeds down (he does this after mowing). It is also true that I don’t really know what I’m doing and will never truly commit to putting things in when they should be put in, or using fertilizer enough to make a difference, or trying to convert my soil to something better than the rock hard stuff that I must break into with a pick to plant my annuals (with a quick prayer and best wishes to them). It is also true that I somehow seem to end up with a bunch of things that don’t get going until August so I have a fairly late blooming yard.

All the same, blooming things are spectacular. Seeing them anywhere makes me happy, but in my own yard? Extra happy.

Oh yah, remember how we all grew up being told by other kids (who were told by some other kids) about how daddy long legs are the most poisonous spider ever . . . only their mouth is too small to actually bite you. Who started this? How does every kid know to pass it on? It sounds highly suspect . . . then again, I paused from leaning into these leaves to get the picture I wanted to avoid the little guy . . . just in case he was the one daddy long leg out there to have developed  a large mouth.

As you all know, my zinnias generally make me the happiest, but they haven’t yet achieved the full heights of their glory. In the meantime, these hollyhocks might be what I am the very most excited about:

They only started blooming this week. We used to see them on the hillsides at Bear Lake when we were little, and when we did,  my mom would always tell us about making hollyhock dolls when she was young. Last spring, in a burst of sentimentality, I bought a little packet of seeds and gave them a go. They were still no bigger than an inch in diameter (and very low to the ground) when I transplanted them outside. I couldn’t see any hollyhockness about them. And, I never did. By August, the leaves looked like beginning squash plants and that was that.

I was out running one day and saw an elderly lady weeding in a lovely patch of hollyhocks. I paused and complimented her on them and told her about my failed attempt at growing them. “Oh,” she said, “they’ll be lovely next year. They’re biennials and they never bloom their first year.” While I was happy to hear that, perhaps, I hadn’t failed; “next year” seemed a ridiculously long time to wait. It turns out to have been a lucky thing I had never bothered to learn about them being biennials though. If I had, I likely would have failed to plant them (not having the patience to wait for them to finally bloom) and I would have missed out on this spectacularness!

They are literally about seven feet tall. Had I known what they would become, I would have spaced them much farther apart than I did. Every morning an entire new stock seems to have bloomed up and down its length with a bright new color of flowers. They are amazing.

Anyway, I suppose that’s enough of that. Someday, maybe, when I don’t have so many little ones needing my attention, I might take this gardening business quite seriously!