Our front yard flower bed - Photo by Tom Egelhoff
Our front yard flower bed - Photo by Tom Egelhoff
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Spring. I hate it. At least during the winter all I have to do is shovel a few feet of snow off the short driveway.

I do that about every 16th snow whether it needs it or not.

Spring Is Winter's Punishment

Spring arrives and I have to mow once a week. Can’t do that every 16th week. Digging, planting, raking, watering, string trimming — it never ends.

My normal TV watching winter exercise regimen doesn’t serve me very well when I have to do actual manual labor.

But the boss of the family has a look in mind that we must maintain no matter what.

The Planning Process and Cost

Last year we decided that a hedge across the front of the house would look nice so we bought about 15 dry root hedges that the dog decided would be good chew toys and ate about half of them.

So we replaced those and added a nasty looking chicken wire (which I found out is now called poultry netting) fence that she promptly found she could crawl under.

By this time the third replacement of dry root hedges has been picked over pretty good so new hedge planning is underway for this year.

Along with some sort of moat with crocodiles.

I wonder if the Bearcat is available to prevent the nighttime hedge assault of Carly the Wonder Dog.

Pots, Tomatoes, And Hanging Baskets

My stock tip of the week — invest in any company that produces or sells potting soil. This year I plan to check pallet prices to see if there is any savings.

Hanging pots all over the deck and the bird feeder tree accompanied by four or five varieties of tomato plants.

In recent years we’ve tried peas, cabbage, cauliflower and peppers in pots with limited success.

We’ve always had pretty good luck with tomatoes so I guess it’s not a total loss. I doubt that we are candidates for a planting or growing how-to TV show any time soon.

Some Final Thoughts

I guess the warm weather is a nice trade off for about six weeks of backbreaking work to have something better than a car on blocks in the front yard.

With our recent warm weather cabin fever is getting intense. We are both ready for some form of greenery to appear.

As usual, our tulips are coming up this time of year but in past years they are usually covered with snow — but not this March.

If you happen to see someone walking around any of the local garden centers that appears to have a double hernia that would probably be me.

I can’t wait for winter.

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