Ouch, man….

It was a beautiful day here today--sunny and pushing 70°! In lieu of a workout, I hit the yard for some cleanup. I picked up lots of branches and limbs that had accumulated over the winter and piled them on a couple of brush piles. I went out front and cut back all the dead junk in the front flower bed. As I was doing that, I decided to get all the leaves out of there, too. I like to refer to leaves as "nature's mulch," and let me tell you, those perennials were well protected! (If we tried to get rid of all the leaves in our yard in the fall, it would be like one of those special punishments or impossible tasks--Sisyphus pushing his rock up the hill, Tantalus trying to reach his grapes, or Hercules cleaning the Augean stables. Thus, nature's mulch.)

I was glad I cleaned the leaves out of there, because things are greening up and popping out! This will get more sunshine to them, and I hope everything does well. I've been trying to plant more perennials each year (after they go on sale) so that I don't have to buy annuals every year. That gets expensive! (I still want to get some for the front flower boxes, though.) The flower bed that Ken built a few years ago gets lots of sun, and I've tried to get very hardy and sun-tolerant perennials. The Shasta daisies seem to do really well, and this picture is from last year. I can hardly wait to see them start blooming--daisies are so cheery. Coreopsis also seems to thrive there. Maybe I'll put some coneflowers in later this summer.

Anyhoo, it was nice to see some green in there! I also noticed that in front of the house, there were a couple of places where the leaves were pushed up. The crocuses are doing very well! Some are even blooming already. It amazes me that crocuses can push a pile of leaves up like that. We have crocuses of steeeeeel!

It felt so great to get out there and work, and I worked up a sweat. But ouch, I hurt already! I'll probably really be sore tomorrow. It's a good kind of hurt, though. I was planning on shooting some hoops after I cleaned out the flower bed, but I was plum tuckered and I'll do that later this week. I hope the weather was good in your neck of the woods!