In tune...

This spring, my second since retirement, has been the best gardening year since I first planted my cottage gardens two decades ago. Maybe it's the slower pace, knowing that I can work anywhere in the yard, wanting to make each garden space perfect, having all the time I need. If I need to walk away before I'm done, and move to a different task, it doesn't stress me.

Each day I walk out onto the front porch, where I can see all my perennial gardens. And each day, something new is in bloom.

This single clematis bud caught my eye, standing proud in the morning sun. There would have been more, but an incautious shifting of the container broke a stem.

This clematis stirs so many memories in me. It's the variety we chose to plant in our yard in West Richland, our first house together. We planted clematis at the top of a retaining wall in the front yard, so the vines would spill over the wall and show their blooms to the street. But instead, the silly vines grew toward the only vertical surface in sight: the front of the house. 

When we bought this house and acreage, the first spring I was thrilled to find the same clematis, trained to grow up the downspout at the end of the garage. It was so laden with blooms, it started to pull the gutter off the building. So Dave cut it down. The next year, it grew from nothing to a blossom-laden vine that grew along the sidewalk, all the way to the end of the garage... nearly 70 feet long. I wish I'd taken pictures of it. I pruned it back each year, and it died one winter in a bitterly cold ice storm.

I replaced it a few years later with the same variety, the only one I considered. Why mess with a good thing?

My day...

Watered the plants around the patio. Hostas with their quilted texture are my favorite foliage.

The Lady's Mantle is full of buds, and the leaves collect the morning dew.

Hauled the camellia and lilac prunings to the burn pile.

Weeded and mulched the hollyhock border.

Counted the buds on the pink double peony... there are forty one!

Filled the bird feeders in the orchard, an everyday chore.

In bloom (TT)

Playing in the garden in black and white today.
Even though I'm surrounded by the colors in my cottage gardens,
I love the simplicity that black and white brings.

Linking up on Texture Tuesday today... you can find more images on Kim's blog.

Surrounded by pink...

Our patio is surrounded by mature rhododendrons, gorgeous huge plants that were so small when we moved here, and have grown so big in nearly thirty years. They are planted around the edge of our concrete patio, bushes of vivid pink, dark red, burgundy, bright red, and pink (which blooms at Christmas each year). My favorite opens up dark rose pink and gradually changes to soft pink with a dark spotted throat.

Books for spring

I'm loving my new Trader Joe's cookbook, so I went looking for more and found Deanna Gunn's The Cooking with Trader Joe's Cookbook. And that led me to Sara Foster's Casual Cooking. My kind of cuisine. Easy, tasty, wonderful food.

I scored some felt remnants at a yard sale recently, and went looking for ideas of how to use it. And I was amazed at the range of books the KCLS has on using felt in projects (as well as how to turn wool into felt). So many cute ideas, from toys to pincushions. Kata Golda's Hand-Stitched Felt, Super-Cute Felt, and Fa-la-la-la-la Felt.

With the world springing into life all around me, my photography turns in that direction. I'm loving Clive Nichols' The Art of Flower & Garden Photography and Edward Parker's Photographing Trees. Gorgeous photographs, great ideas for improving mine.

Between pulling weeds and running around with my camera, I've found time for a few pieces of fiction. German writer Nele Neuhous' Snow White Must Die was pretty wonderful, and I look forward to her next book. Even better was Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl. Next up are two by a favorite author, C.J. Box:  Breaking Point, and Stone Cold.

And finally, Simon Armitage's Walking Home: A Poet's Journey. I can hardly wait to read this book. It's a poet's tale of walking the backbone of England, 256 miles in 19 days.

Baby violets part 2...

A few weeks ago, I snipped off a few African violet leaves and put them in water to grow roots.

This morning I got out pots and soil to plant the violet leaves that have sprouted in water on my kitchen windowsill. And saw something completely unexpected:  each leaf now has sprouted a tiny cluster of leaves, where the roots and stem meet.

Not expecting this at all, I had no plan. So I compromised:  two leaves went directly into soil, with the new crown just at the surface. The other two leaves will remain in water until the new crown of leaves has grown bigger, and then I'll plant them.

It's truly wonderful to see nature at work, isn't it? I'm looking forward to seeing which approach, dirt or water, will work best. Then I just might have to cut a few more leaves to turn into brand new violets.

Something new...

There's something new in our little farmhouse, something we've not had since leaving our "modern" house in West Richland 30 years ago:  a bathroom fan that didn't have to be plugged in and take up two feet of counter space.

Every update to a nearly century-old farmhouse is a challenge, but our bathroom remodel has been much more complicated than it should have been. This is partly because the original remodel, back in the late 1960s, was not well executed (or conceived). The bathroom straddles what was once the original bathroom and a hallway (we think) that ran between the original dining room (our current bedroom) and the kitchen. We figured this out when we tore out the vinyl flooring and found the remains of an interior wall.

We thought this would only affect how we installed new flooring, but no. Turns out that instead of replacing the original plaster ceiling and leaving the high ceiling intact, and bringing the plumbing up from the basement, they added a false ceiling to hide remnants of the old wall conceal the plumbing. So adding a simple bathroom vent was a bit complicated. We had to tear up floorboards in the attic to expose the old ceiling, run wiring from the hallway, and chisel out (using the modern equivalent of a Saws-All) a small U-shaped gap in the false ceiling joists for the vent pipe to run through.

The outside vent screen went in last weekend, and today Dave installed the lighted fan and ran the flexible vent pipe. Then it was time for a test shower. No steam fogging our mirror or window... success!

Lilac arbor...

I almost cut it down, this long branch from one of our old lilac bushes. It's one of the last remaining lilacs from thirty years ago, when we bought this property. Over the years, we've cut the old trunks down and let the suckers replace them, trying to keep the lilacs viable through windstorms and ice storms.

My sister encouraged me to let this one live, this horizontal branch that extends from one lilac bush to the next. When the lilacs burst into bloom this spring, I was so glad I did.

I love how the lilac arbor frames a window into the orchard, and the tumbled-down pasture fence beyond.

Horse duty...

I am horse-sitting for the next ten days, while Jess is in Syracuse first for her college graduation, then for a well-deserved vacation.

The farm is just up the road from me, with large pastures and an antique farmhouse like mine, but with a wonderful old rustic barn. I always dreamed of having a barn of my own, a place to keep my leather goods and saddles, where I could line up my boots in a row, ready to be laced up before a ride. A place with a cozy corner to call my own, with a comfy chair and desk, a place to hide out for a while each day and think about nothing but horses.

Jessica's two are pasture horses like my own were, coming up to the barn for evening feeding. It's been a decade now since my last horse moved on, and all it takes is walking into the barn and calling for the horses, and I'm right back there... those amazing years when there were always horses within sight and sound.

Blue...

The perennial bachelor's buttons have burst into bloom, encouraged by nearly a week of warm, sunny weather. With care, they'll bloom through June. They open up right along with other blues in the garden: forget-me-not, grape hyacinth, and bluebell.

Nothing says "Welcome to spring" quite like the blues.  Is it any wonder blue is my favorite flower color?