Not garden related. So sue me.

What, you've never seen kids being carried to safety over mulch by a ridiculously large duck? Mike informs me it's a loon.

The zoo!

We took note of the peonies and poppies at the zoo. They seem to be genuine, permanent plants growing right where they're planted, which brings me to one of the most irksome situations facing modern human beings: the sneaky replanting of public planters so that the flowers are always pretty and always in season. Peter and I noticed a few bits of evidence at the UofC today: ripped up faded tulips sitting on the ground next to a bed of gorgeous, blooming peonies, salvia, columbine, and lots of other things we're pretty sure weren't grown there. It's like that story about the Buddah, who as a child was sheltered from old age and death to the degree that he was shocked and horrified when he first encountered an aged, sick person. Granted, he then grew up to be the Buddah. But that hardly seems like justification for the practice of secretly replacing spring flowers with summer ones as though nothing ever fades, or has a season. Not even to make the flower beds pretty for graduation!

Roses

They're blooming really nicely despite my continued neglect of whatever powdery mildew-like condition they have.

Peonies

Technically only the red one is ours, but the huge bunch of white peonies are on the border between our yard and our neighbor's, so we enjoy watching them, too. (I'm trying to figure out a way to generously offer to split off some from their plants for myself! Still working on that.) Peter was really worried about the ants, until I talked to my dad to ask him whether I should relocate my few peonies to somewhere else in the yard. I asked, "What do peonies like?" meaning, sun, shade, soil type... and he said confidently, "Ants!" So now Peter and I talk a lot about how Papa said peonies love ants, and the ants won't hurt the peonies, and there's no need to worry. We have this conversation every day or two, and I think Peter's getting a new appreciation for ants.

Fun with cicadas!

Grace and Peter both have the fantastic quality of being unafraid of insects. They do not get this from their mother. I'm not afraid of cicadas, exactly, I just don't want to touch them, and I lie awake at night envisioning millions of them crawling around our town, screeching, and it makes me a little uncomfortable. Plus the gulls have been gathering in huge flocks to eat them, and they like to perch on the roofline of the community house of the church where Peter goes to preschool. So every drop-off is a little Hitchcockian, and I resent that a bit.

Anyway. The kids. The bugs. The top pictures are of a mature adult; the bottom pictures are of, as Grace puts it, "one of the baaaaaaabies. Aren't they cute?" Ummm..... it's a face only a mama cicada could love. And I am no mama cicada.

Robin's eggs

Every year since Grace has been old enough to notice, we've found a robin's egg or two. Usually they're broken, whether by hatchlings or thieves is never clear. Once in a while we find an intact one. This year Peter insisted he was old enough to hold it (his argument was something like, "I am gentle wif all da little animals!" Sure. Tell it to the cat.) But he held the egg quite carefully, and then the kids returned it to the base of the tree where we found it. Earlier I saw a fledgling of some kind taking a bath in water collected in their sandbox - maybe a robin from the same nest.

Grace: spotter of peonies.

Grace excitedly hustled us out to the little wooded area on the south end of our yard a few weeks ago, reporting that she had found something cool. Indeed! We have three very nice peonies which we haven't ever noticed before, two of which are about to bloom. The blossoms are gorgeous, and waiting for them to burst is fun. Our neighbors have some beautiful white peonies that they've had for more than twenty years, but ours are reddish. We'll take more pictures as they bloom fully!

In Which We Make Like Christo

One of these is an art installation by Christo, the artist who... wraps stuff. The title is "Wrapped Trees XVI." The rest are shrubs in our yard, both before and after we wrapped them in tulle. (Alternate title #1: In Which We Take Our Shrubs to Prom.) This is because the current obsession of our neighborhood is the 17-year cicada bloom, wherein lots of freakish looking but harmless bugs, alleged to be almond-flavored when cooked and eaten, invade Chicagoland and eat your shrubs. The solution to this - I kid you not - is to wrap shrubs and trees in tulle. This is easier than it sounds. If it does not sound easy, it's still easier than it sounds. (Alternate title #2: In Which We Decide the Perfect is the Enemy of the Good, and Do Our Best.)

First, you have to buy tulle, estimating how many yards it will take to cover your shrubs so that insects won't be able to wriggle in and eat the leaves. (Or the bark? Something like that.) This involves just taking your best stab at it. One woman we know stood in line at the cutting table behind someone buying 35 yards of magenta tulle. This seems like overkill to me. I ended up with about 15 yards of various colors, although as the woman at the cutting table observed, I did try my best to get complimentary colors.

Next you have to dress a shrub like a bridesmaid. Words fail me. It's harder than it sounds: that's all I can say.

The first rose from the rosebushes we planted for Mother's Day is looking good! The rose is called "Climbing America" and although the color is sort of shockingly salmon pink, it looks very nice against the house. Both rosebushes also look like they might have powdery mildew, but I have yet to obsessively google rose diseases to figure out a solution to this.

Various blossoms: the first is the really pretty impatence in a hanging basket behind the house. The second are something that came with the tree we planted shortly after we moved in - they bloom at the base; they're very delicate and pretty. The third are some of the additional salvia plants I put in this week. The front of the house is fairly long, and although we're getting quite a collection of plants there are many which appear only once, so it looks a little ecclectic. I think the salvia, planted in twos along the length of the house, will help to make the garden look a little more planned and a little less random. And it seems like a sturdy, easy-to-grow perennial, judging by the frequency with which I see it in public planters.

Grace digs worms!

Free plants!

I responded to an ad on Craigslist for some free plants (with a 'you dig' clause.) So on the hottest day of the spring so far, I took the kids over to the home of some very nice Homewood woman who had, as she put it, a lot of green stuff she wanted gone. All she wanted to keep were the hostas.

Iris? Very nice! Lily of the valley? I was just going to go over to a neighbor's and ask if I could take some! Tiger Lillies? Sure... never had them before, but the worst that happens is that they die, and the second worst is that I hate them and have to give them away to someone else, starting and endless Craigslist daisy chain of unloved and unlovable lillies. I also dug up a few ferns, and we'll see how they do.

Before and after!

Tragically, no photos were taken of Mom covered from the neck down in well-rotted manure. But these are our plants, first in the car on the way home from the nurseries, and then happily in the ground. We haven't put the carrots in, or the lettuce, but they're next.

And the veggies... are in.

So, in keeping with local custom that Mother's Day is the date for safe planting... we planted. Oh, my Maude, we planted.

Here are the things we have one of: eggplant, jalapeno pepper, rosemary, peppermint, oregano (from last year), chives, and sage. Our luck with peppers was dismal last year, but Grace made a compelling argument that we needed one plant of jalapenos for salsa. We planted four basil plants (nice, healthy sweet basil; the other varieties are coming, or so the nursery claims. We saved some room for them.) The kids love pesto, so it makes sense to plant as much basil as possible, because pesto freezes well and then makes pasta and pizza and bread and fish so great during the winter. We also planted eight zucchini plants, on the grounds that they have such a reputation for ease of cultivation and abundant produce that surely something there will stick.

And, Lord help me, we put in thirty tomato plants. (Note to potential critics: this is a reduction of about 20% from last year, and no one complained when we brought them a few pounds of nice, fresh organic tomatoes. Ahem.) They have such alluring names: Early Girl (who doesn't like a girl who's early? I love puntuality!), Big Boy (appealing in a tomato!), Sweet 100 (that's an enticing promise, all right!) But it's the tomato-naming conventions that are referential to other tomatoes that really gets me: Golden Boy! Yellow Boy! Lemon Boy! And my favorite, Better Boy! We also got some heirloom varieties, including something called Marglobe and some called Pink Globe, and something utterly pragmatic called Patio. (Guess where you can grow that one?) I did the choosing myself, and apparently avoided any beefsteak, but there's always the chance that I'll sneak another one home. Our seedlings are looking puny, but we planted them anyway - they're all Sweeties.

We have a good amount of space left for carrots and the couple varieties of lettuce seeds I bought, and I think we'll resow nastertiums in the edges where nothing else is planted. A few of the bean plants we started in the kitchen are looking really good, and so I have some hope there. Grace was my Big Helper, and from the way she literally wallowed in well-rotted manure (no, it's not stinky, but it does have a certain texture that reminds one of what it used to be) made the day's work really cheerful. We spread manure and topsoil liberally, and watered well, and we're hoping for the best.

A few funny garden-related conversations: after a serious discussion about various basil varieties, the guy at the nursery offered to carry my plants to the car and asked which car was mine. In the midst of the busy check-out line, I said cheerfully, "It's the blue Subaru with the offensive bumper stickers." The line got noticably more quiet. When I was walking back to the car, the nursery guy stopped me to say that not only was he not offended, that I was a woman after his own heart. Gotta love closet liberals! And the second conversation was between me and a middle-aged guy at the hardware store. He was getting some keys cut and asked me as I picked out some tomato cages, "What are those?" I said, "Tomato cages." He looked at me blankly, obviously wondering why I needed to cage a plant. I said helpfully "Turns out they really are vines!" He looked skeptical and said politely, "Good luck with that!"

Finally, I had the occasion to say to my child, with all goodwill and sincerity, "You're a good manure spreader!" And she replied, "Thanks, Mommy!"

Pictures to follow.

Wild strawberries!

We discovered last summer that we had this odd little patch of wild strawberries in our yard. Although we didn't expect much from the fruit after sampling wild strawberries in a friend's yard that were wierd, terrible little fruits, we were pleasantly surprised to find them delicious. Grace remembered, and instructed Mike not to cut the grass in this part of the lawn so that we could make the most of the berries. It's a fairly large patch - maybe 15 feet by 5 feet - so even after the squirrels and birds have their fair share, we're likely to get at least a few berries. One of the best parts of growing up in Montana was the abundance of wild berries in the summer, and I'm tickled that my kids get to experience this literally in their own yard.

Grace: That is a hanging plant. It is in the front yard. It is petunias. We bought this at the plant nursery today. It is at the south part of the yard.

Grace: Those are in the back yard. There are wild and non-wild of them. This is the wild kind. I took this picture! It is near the daylillies.

Peter with shovel

Peter really likes to help dig a hole.

It's not spelled "impatience."

Grace: This was tooken by our swing set. We picked them out at a special plant nursery. The one in the other picture is the same thing. It was in the back yard. And, I took both pictures.

Window boxes and flower pots

We chose some zinnias and some sweet potato vine and some coleus to fill out our window boxes and our potted flowers for the patio. Unless the rabbits eat them, we should have some nice color all summer!

Mom digs a hole, the umpteenth.

I asked for rosebushes for Mother's Day, so we bought some today. I've wanted to put some in on either side of the driveway, against the garage, since we moved in. The soil was rocky and unpromising, so I dug out both beds and replaced the soil with topsoil. We bought the trellises at Joanns, and hopefully the roses can be trained on them. (I assume that's the protocol, but what do I know?)