A Picture is Worth 1000 Words

May 15, 2010

May 15, 2012

In my last post I was lamenting the progress of my garden due to the cold and wet May we have had.  I thought it would be fun to document the source of my angst.  Pretty sad......

A Little of This, A Little of That....

An update on baby Kylie.  After the third surgery I wrote about (to put a mechanical valve in) she had a fourth one.  The last surgery was to implant a pacemaker.  On  Friday (5/11) she was released from the hospital although they are staying nearby the hospital for another week until they can come home.  She will require many follow-up visits and since Juneau doesn’t have any baby cardiologists they will have to make a trip to Anchorage several times a month.

Kylie, leaving the hospital!

A couple weeks ago her cousin organized a fundraiser dinner of Indian Tacos and about $3500 was raised.  In addition, a bank account now has about $1500 in donations and fundraiser site (http://www.gofundme.com/ksabk) has raised $1800 and Krista still has leave donations to draw from.  Many generous people have stepped up and help support them financially and with leave donations and I am so thankful for that support, as are they I’m sure.  I can’t imagine what it is like to go through something like this but I it warms my heart to see how people gather around someone in need. 

May has been cold and wet here and my garden is suffering.  I compared a picture of one garden to how it looked two years ago and it was  pretty pathetic.  Lots of blank spots where stuff coming up has rotted and other stuff just hasn’t come in yet.  I am gathering all my yearly annuals for container baskets but it’s been too cold to go out and put them together.  I refuse to go dig in the dirt with frozen hands!

Work has been very busy lately.  I had kind of a slow winter when I thought, “this isn’t so bad after all” and then I got slammed.  Some days I can’t  even keep up on the onslaught of emails I have to answer, let alone any real work done.  I got through my first construction project though, and I’m working on a second one.  I’m soliciting for space for a new public health center in Nome and trying to reconcile the 4^th quarter billings with DGS’ numbers.  Getting ready for fiscal year end as well.  I feel like I’m making progress but my boss assures me it will be a couple years before I’m really proficient.  I think I was given this job to teach me patience, which has never been among my virtues.

Memorial Day Weekend

Old gross walls



 

Oscar being ever helpful throughout

















 



 



 

The new walls in back (the cats love walking down it!)






We had a busy weekend for sure.  On Saturday we got two pallets of bricks delivered from The Home Depot.  Our intention was to tear out the old rotten, 2x4's that had been holding the garden in along the perimeter of our house and replace them with bricks walls.  SOMEONE (who will remain anonymous) had done the math and determined we needed two pallets of bricks but we built all the garden walls and still had a pallet and then some remaining.  Our next project was to do a garden behind the house.  First all the rocks that had been there had to be hauled away and then we had to level out the front.  Chris is upset that it isn’t in a straight line (the very linear engineer in him) but I told him my garden doesn’t grow in a straight line and I enjoy the more organic look.  I had to keep reminding him the brick is to enhance the garden, not the other way around.  He kept saying “it’ll grow back”....not what I wanted to hear.  He doesn’t understand the emotional attachment to gardening! When the back was done I had the bright idea to build another garden in front.  I have actually been wanting to do this for year so it worked out great.  It was H O T yesterday and it is hard work hauling those bricks, rocks and heavy bags of soil around.  Today I almost enjoyed coming back to work so I can relax!  That’s a lie actually, it’s supposed to be in the high 70’s today and I’d give anything to continue my vacation.





New garden with miniature liliac in the middle









More Gardening

Peony Tulips

Circle Garden out front

Another view

More Pretty Flowers





I don't know what this is, some annual I bought



Primroses with a strawbery mixed in



Plot by the woods

Trillium in bloom

Berginia

Spring in the back yard

My circle garden

This is the time of year that I love looking at my gardening pictures.  Oh, that's a lie, I love looking at them any time of year but especially when snow is on the ground. One garden in particular has a profound evolution from spring to fall and it's my "circle garden" a plot of dirt in the front of the house that used to have trees growing in it. 


In the Early Years.....





In Spring time

 



Full Bloom in Summer