Various purple things!

The lilacs are finally blooming! Just a bit, and just the one bush. I need to research lilac care and loving, because this one has been neglected for a while. But it has started blooming, which is a Big Event for our garden. And the purple guys I put in over the weekend - I know, they have a name. But for the moment, they're the purple guys who are adding some color to the front of the house.

Our next book purchase, bar none: Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle," about eating locally. http://www.amazon.com/Animal-Vegetable-Miracle-Year-Food/dp/0060852550/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-9600151-1529545?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1177900578&sr=8-1 I love her novels, I love her essays on parenting and envioronmentalism (especially a lovely one about her daughter Lily's chickens) and this book looks so fun! The interview with her at salon.com is a good read in its own right, if only for this line: "Sometimes I see people at the gym bench-pressing until they turn purple, or running five miles in the rain after work, and I think to myself, 'Who could push themselves that hard? Not me!' And yet, walking to the garden with a hoe feels like a tryst with a lover. I adore working up a sweat on a sunny day among the sweet potatoes. I love having used every muscle I own, making food for my family. That process is deeply compelling, probably coded into our DNA."

our day of joy and optimism.

So today is for joy. It turns out - things are really growing. Things I thought for sure I would kill - things I thought I'd neglected or somehow managed badly - are still growing. The hostas I planted in the shade garden last fall? Actually thriving. The hydrangia that I was supposed to maybe cut back last fall but didn't? A mass of new, green growth in the midst of the dead branches. The black-eyed Susans that I bought for their late-summer color and hoped might make it? Are in full leaf and look to be growing well. Ground cover has spread, despite the fact that it might technically be a weed. The shrubs alongside the driveway are starting to bloom. It's enough to make my closet optimist step out boldly into the yard and start planting more stuff. Which we did, all morning. I must confess that I tend to want what I want when I want it (which, let's face it, does seem to be true of the human condition generally). (Mom and Dad: you're right, I admit it. Just this once, under these specific circumstances: I'm not especially patient.) But it turns out that the waiting is sometimes - often, even - actually worth it. New growth is joyful. Things surviving the winter feels like a small miracle and there are just days where a person needs a small miracle or two. So out of optimism I'm planting more shrubs, despite the warnings that it's the year for cicadas and they'll eat all my shrubs. I'm planting, and working in the garden, and getting my hands dirty, because it beats the alternative by a mile.

Plants Grace found beautiful.

Our trip to the nursery!

We have a love-love relationship with the nursery nearest our house. We love to buy plants, they love to see us coming to buy plants. I decided last year that plants could be budgeted as entertainment, because we don't go out much, or have extravagent expenses related to a fancy social calendar, but we do buy plants. Today we bought some rosemary, because Grace begged for it ("Mom, I love the smell so much!") and an eggplant, because who knows, we might get lucky with it, and some sage because I'm determined to expand my cooking to include more fresh herbs. We also got two more shrubs for the backyard and some of the purple stuff, the name of which escapes me at the moment (one more sad realization that I should have taken Latin somewhere along the way, because I'd be able to remember plant names). Grace practiced taking pictures of flowers, too.

The beautiful little tree in our backyard is blooming. I love the color of the blossoms and the shape of the tree. It shades the yard right next to the kids' swingset so I can sit, in a chair, in the shade, drinking coffee while they play.

Rain.

After a sunny, beautiful weekend we have had... rain. And more rain. And then? Some more rain. Maybe to adults this is just part of the day, but to a toddler, rain is a chance to wear your rainboots, dress in your firefighter rain coat, and jump in a puddle. Or - as Mike discovered Wednesday morning - to get ready for school, put on your sneakers, make a run for it on your way out to the car, and jump in a puddle. Peter is umbrella-obsessed, to the extent that he likes to perch himself on the back of the trike, while Grace sits on the seat and pedals, and hold his umbrella over his head just in *case* of rain. (Perhaps you're thinking, hmm, two kids on a trike, pedaling down the sidewalk, one of them facing backwards holding an umbrella... doesn't sound so safe. To which I reply: Peter is very, very sturdy.)

More to the point, about the rain, we have no recent pictures to upload because it's not so fun to stand outside in the rain and take photos of your garden. But the update is good: the tree in the backyard which we planted a few months after moving in has survived another winter and is blooming with lovely pink flowers. The new shrubs do not lack for water. Some hyacinth bulbs I had given up on decided to make an appearance after all - they're vigorous and green and I hope the flowers are pretty. The daylillies are growing like crazy and look very nice, although they haven't sent up flower stalks yet. The daffodils are on their way out, the tulips have taken a bit of a beating in the rain, the seedlings are struggling bravely in the wet soil. Dandelions have sprouted all over the lawn, despite the weekend mowing, but all of the neighbors' lawns look just as bad, so we're not bothering to do anything toxic about it. I saw what *looked* like a lilac blooming in someone else's yard, but couldn't tell for sure, because I was in the car. Our lilac is nowhere near blooming, but we're waiting eagerly for it.

In amusing, only slightly garden-related news, a neighbor recently reported a conversation she had with a second neighbor about our family. The other woman asked our neighbor Charlotte whether our home was occupied by dwarfs. Astonished, Charlotte said no, but that we do have two children. Hmm, said the other woman. I saw them outside and thought they were dwarfs. The kicker? The woman in question taught school for *forty years.* Such is life on our odd little street.

Hanging baskets! Peter and I chose some geraniums from the nursery. We put them along the garage wall, so that when you look out the kitchen window, you can see the window boxes and the hanging baskets in addition to the shade plants in the garden below. Grace adds: We bought the hooks at JoAnn's last summer.

Mom digs a hole! We planted a couple of shrubs, and we're going to get one more, to provide some cover for a pipe and the air conditioner, and some landscaping against the back of the house. They should have pink blooms throughout the summer.

Peter at the scene of the crime: he carefully pulled the petals off a tulip and threw them on the ground. When I told him he wasn't allowed to hurt any more tulips, he said: "You're so mean! Mean!" If you look carefully you can see the tulip - reduced to a sad stem - in front of him.

Grace says: I took the pictures. They are tulips, and they are in the front yard. They are in a bunch, like a family. They are under a pine tree.

We added this little guy to the shady section of the garden - along the east side of the garage. A big fir tree keeps it shady for most of the day. So we've been adding shade-friendly perennials since last summer: various kinds of hostas, but some ferns and... whatever this is. The hostas have just started to come up.

We finally planted our seedlings today. They probably could have gone in a week or two ago, especially the beans, but our weather has been so cold we didn't want to plant them and see them freeze. We're only about half done with the job, but it's supposed to be a nice weekend, so we'll get some more time outdoors digging in the ground.

Grace is thrilled to find worms. She's not so fond of other crawling things like ants, spiders, grubs, centipedes and the like (although cicadas are also a big favorite.) This little guy had several homes, first in an empty seed cup, then in a seed cup with some seedlings, and finally in the dirt.

Tomato cages! Last year we underestimated how much our plants would grow (turns out tomatoes really *are* vines) and had too few cages for our plants. So we'll try to do better this year. I'm not terribly optimistic about these seedlings - they seemed really fragile - but they smelled great, just like tomato plants should.

Mom in shorts, with mismatched gloves and a trowel. Grace is getting good with the digital camera, somewhat to my chagrin.

Some of the bean sprouts got really long. Half look healthy, with nice strong leaves and good stems. Half look a little sickly, or suffered some damage as we brought them outside to transplant in the garden. But we planted them all (about eight, I think) and we're hoping the plastic trellis we picked up out of someone's trash a year ago will serve as an adequate support for the beans.

Grace tills the soil!

Grace was really proud of how well our seedlings grew! Peter lobbied to be let inside the rabbit fence, but didn't do so well once he was in.

Note to those who "give a s*** about categories" (I'm quoting from a speech by religious scholar J.Z. Smith, there, and not just being vulgar for no reason. Really.) and who might object that this is not, strictly speaking, a photo of a garden, but more like two cute cousins sitting in chairs overlooking Puget Sound.... it was taken in a *sculpture* garden. Or park, or something. Too cute not to pass along, at any rate.

Cool garden ornament!

Aunt Sara told us the name of this plant, but we (ok, I) cannot recall. Grace loved how tall and unusual the flowers were.

Gorgeous Seattle flowers

Grace and Peter had fun pointing out flowers for us to photograph, and we're getting lots of ideas for our garden - some for this summer, (like roses!) some for the fall (like more bulbs, in more places!)

Tree stretched over the sidewalk, blooming...

Beautiful moss growing on a carport roof.

The hedge of purple flowers (species unknown to this mama) was irresistable to our double-strollered toddlers.

Seattle flowers: or what we did during Chicago's cold snap

We were struck by how many really well-designed rock gardens we saw. The hens-and-chicks on this one were especially healthy and large.

Rhododendrons

The second and third pictures are of Aunt Sara and Uncle Chris's rhododendron, and the first is one we saw while we were walking. The blooms are so beautiful!

Rosemary

This is a whole, huge hedge (breadth not completely visible in photos) of blooming rosemary.

Grace under a gorgeous canopy of flowers.

Peter's latest botanical foray: having learned that the shrub with the yellow flowers is forsythia, he now spots it everywhere and yells triumphantly, "Forsifia! Mama, forsifia!" whenever he sees it. It's especially funny when we're biking, and he yells from the bike trailer - he tends to startle passersby, innocently jogging or walking their dogs. "Forsifia!" indeed.

Peter and I started clearing out the vegetable garden. Lots of dead leaves, old tomato vines, and weeds to get rid of!