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Viola

Today, I couldn’t take it anymore.

It has been gorgeous for a week and a half, ever since the unexpected snow we had last week. My seedlings are leggy and undernourished and aching to be planted. Also, there is a definite lack of floral love around now that the daffodils have faded.

So I dragged poor, sleepy Josh to the nursery so we could resume an old tradition – decking out the garden for Easter. It started in Kansas City, as soon as we had four square feet outside that we could stuff pots into, and now that we have a front yard, a back yard, a deck, plus some space on the sides of the house that are looking fairly bare, I’ve been itching to fill them with growing things, mostly plants (but we have a nice collection of lizards too).

As is usual in these outings, I daintily picked through herbs while Josh stuffed the little red wagon the nursery provided us with flats of lettuce and tomatoes. When we started to march over to the counter with our stuffed wagon, I stopped and picked up these violas on the way out. The whole point of the outing initially had just been to pick up some flowers to perk up our front garden, but as usual we ended up with a lot of things we could eat and only one thing with any color besides green in it.

Since our lot is actually owned by the gophers and we’re just renting it from them, I have to plant everything in containers still, even with all this LAND around. Luckily, Mom was an avid collector of outside pretties, and in twenty minutes of tidying up the yard I ended up with two massive planters (one of solid iron) and about six large plastic pots.

The next two hours were filthy. I hauled bags of manure around and simultaneously played a very slobbery game of catch through the fence with Sephus, our next door neighbor’s black Lab. I moved dirt from pot to pot, de-potted seedlings and then re-potted them. Then, much like buying new furniture, I had to spend some time moving the pots from one area of the yard to another, just because.

When I stood up and stretched and looked around, I realized I only made it about a third of the way through the planting in two hours. And I was exhausted. But I couldn’t let myself stop, so I grabbed the camera. The seedlings will have to wait one more day for a permanent home, but that just means I have more of this to look forward to tomorrow!