What's The Story, Morning Glory?

"My garden...was of precisely the right extent. An hour or two of morning labor was all that it required. But I used to visit and revisit it a dozen times a day."

--Nathaniel Hawthorne

The weather has been so glorious that I have been spending at least 2 hours in the yard per day (what was I doing with that time before??); it's so nice going to bed being really physically tired, muscles aching -- and sleeping like a champ. The last week or so most of my time has been spent doing a few chores, exercises in tedium, but great thinking time.

First, I tended the strawberry patch. I had read that you should clip all the little stems that connect one clump to another, that each clump should only have about five stems growing from it. This strawberry patch was already here when we moved in, and I assure you that this exercise has never been done. So I painstakingly clipped all the extra tiny stems and made sure each clump was independent of its neighbor. We usually get about 6 - 8 pints of berries from this patch; I'm curious to see how different the crop is this year.

Secondly, the large area that we have spent 2 years clearing of blackberries (with thorns by the way), and honeysuckle is now quickly growing weeds. I figure we got rid of Layer 1: I have only had to pull up 1 or 2 blackberry vines this year. Layer 2 has appeared: Morning Glory vine, possibly some wildflowers, and a large weed that looks like something we used to call "skunk cabbage" when I was growing up, but it doesn't smell bad. It is growing out of a tuber and the stem is pretty fragile so I didn't get to the root of much of these. However, the good news is that Layer 3 is beginning to appear: grass.

In the meantime, the tulips and daffodils are done and I have finished tying up all the daffodils. There was a big variety this year, more flowers keep popping up in areas that I've cleaned up. Some of these guys are pictured up top. The tulips are such a lesson in symmetry. These blooms would slowly open up during the day, close at night like little origami boxes.