Who doesn’t love forget-me-nots?

OK, so it’s chronic spring fever.

Blame it on Spring Fever.

I no longer shiver while walking to the bus in the mornings. The wind has lost its sharp edge and almost holds the warmth of spring. The crows noisily build their nests and the young frogs in the alpaca field chirrup at night. Best of all, the garden has yielded its first sign of the changing season.

New Dawn Climbing Rose Bud

New Dawn Climbing Rose

First Delphinium Bloom

Between the buckets of rain and catching a cold, there hasn’t been a whole lot done in the yard for the past 2 weeks.  But it’s all falling into place in my head.  (Which of course is distinctly different from falling into place in actuality.) 

Finally picked up some of the soil conditioner I’d been wanting.  (Soil conditioner is a nice name for bat poop and other equally lovely things.)  It’ll be used in the front yard where most of the planting will be done. I also happened to run across a great deal on perennials and snatched up their remaining delphiniums, risking the wrath of one elderly lady who was greedily eyeing them as I put them in my cart.  She got her vengeance later by neatly stepping in front of us in line at the checkout to ask the clerk where to find something.  I felt a little guilty, I’ll admit, but then again I did see them first.

Yesterday we ventured out to investigate a Half Price Books that we hadn’t been to before.  I think it halfway appealed to us because it was an adventure that didn’t involve freeway driving.  The whole roughly 15 miles is nearly a straight-shot through trees and farmland and turned out to be a very pretty drive.  In between fits of coughing and an extremely annoying child with an extremely annoying noise-making toy, I managed to find the book I wanted and we were done in less than 15 minutes.  What does that have to do with gardening?  Well, nothing, except that on the drive home we ran across a plant nursery we didn’t know existed.  We spent a happy half hour wandering the rows of plants.  Steven liked nearly every plant I pointed out from my Master List which was nice because it means I’m doing a good job picking out things that I think we both would like. 

But best of all, I ran across a variegated Japanese willow tree which I had never seen before and which will more than likely be our choice for a replacement for the gawd-awful rhododendron in the back yard.  (Which is hopefully being removed this weekend - one way or another.)

There’s a certain sense of satisfaction involved when a idea coalesces into an actual plan of attack.  It’s all laid out before me.  I know what needs done.  I know how to do it.  And best of all, I’ve begun.

Now if I can keep the dogs from digging up the delphiniums, I’ll be happy.

And here’s the finished plan for the small patch of garden along the back side of the house. I have to admit to starting my list of plants before we even knew for certain that we had the house.

Steven and I braved the rain last weekend and explored the Nursery at Mt Si, which is just a few miles down the road from us in North Bend. I really didn’t expect much from it but we ended up being rather pleasantly surprised. They had a fantastic selection, competitive prices, and some really great garden accessories that would be difficult to find outside of an upscale garden shop. I got soaked but I loved every minute of it. They had almost all the plants on my wishlist, except for a few of the lesser known English roses. Those I’m resigned to ordering from online.

Steven loved one of the Japanese maples. It really was very lovely, but you could see that it was an older, mature specimen and I’m sure they would have wanted far more for it than we would be willing to pay. But once that horrid rhodie is ripped out of the back yard, I was thinking that would be the perfect space for a Japanese maple.

And speaking of horrid rhodies, those hot pink rhododendrons and azaleas in front of the house, along with the pink hydrangeas, are being dug up on Saturday. I found someone to take them and his brother-in-law the landscaper is coming out to remove them. That makes me feel a bit better. I know he’ll be professional and try not to damage my lilac when he takes them out.

Can you tell I’m a little bit giddy about having a garden?