Shrub Border!

I should have taken a picture of this before I cleaned it up! It was a tangled mess of small saplings, rose brambles, barberry and just a general thicket of invasives and undesirables. There is probably a handsome case of "contact dermatitis" awaiting me, as I'm sure some of the vines I ripped out are slowly awakening poison ivy! Oh well...
I've been planning on creating a new shrub area for some time. Bob and I have collected a number of lilac suckers from several friends and we (spontaneously) purchased a shrub or two thinking of the future. Bob also had a few small flowering trees from my sister Beatrice having enrolled him in the Arbor Day Foundation. Those were healed into the vegetable garden and have grown impressively, making for a harder transplantation than we originally anticipated. The crab apple especially seems to have liked where it was residing and put up a fight at being moved.

Doesn't look that big but it resisted being dug up! There were a couple of dogwoods, too. One I planted out near a variegated dogwood we purchased last year. The digging in that area was so hard and it got to be late in the afternoon, so I put the other dogwood in the new shrub border. Sometimes, the path of least resistance is awfully appealing!

So it make look just like my shadow on a spot of earth, but there's a hole there waiting for a new resident. I dug and ripped and raked and dug some more- I spent the entire day outside, installing this new section of the garden. It's going to be nice, once we get the fence moved and put a new gate up at the end of a sort of natural path that leads through this former wilderness. Hey: we have friends who are down sizing and getting all happy about not having lawns to mow or gardens to weed. I just keep developing new gardens...
But look what the competition is!

We made a trip to the New York Botanic Garden last week, to deliver Bob's metal work that they sell in the shop there. (One of the horticulturalists said to Bob, "You're famous! Everyone wants your metal work!" That was cool.) But wandering around their 250 acres of trees, shrubs, perennials, bulbs and millions of specimens makes me so envious. Look at those flowering cherries above! And literally a zillion daffodils! Yikes. It was awe inspiring, but I hate to think of how many gardeners they employ. Back here at home, we only have me and Bob and Robin.

Tax Time!

It's hard to believe that that's my studio table. I decided that if I did my taxes in my studio, it would be impossible to ignore the mess and avoid doing them. I am pretty adept at finding other things to do...
Like raking leaves or even hanging out the laundry- anything but having to do my taxes! So, yes, I spread out on my studio table, knowing that I'd get them done as I couldn't use my table and work on my most recent piece. I trick myself occasionally.
It worked: I'm all done. I must have set a new speed record for compiling, adding, computing, correcting, refiguring and copying my taxes. I was seriously annoyed that I had to run upstairs three times (!) to go on the IRS website and calculate various evil and arcane equations. Who thinks this stuff up? As I relentlessly intone every year, the government is especially crazy to trust people like me to do their taxes. On the best of days, I struggle to do things like percentages and on the worst of days, even simple subtraction is a real mind bender. (Please never ask to see my check book.) And the inclusion of Premium Earned Tax Credits to account for my ObamaCare is especially challenging as there are inexplicable sub-categories and side charts. There is even a paragraph that I swear the IRS is saying something to the tune of: "Trust us; just multiply this number (that makes no sense) by this other number (Don't ask us how we arrived at this number; just do it.)" So far, I have always received a refund so I must be doing things right, either that or the agents checking my form feel sorry for me.*
What was especially irksome today was that it had to have been the nicest day this year- an amazingly nice day! However, I am on a course of antibiotics and am supposed to stay out of the sun so I had to ignore the benevolent sun and greening grass. It did force me to stay on task.
Here's something I can attest to. The IRS knows how tough doing taxes can be. They kept suggesting we go drinking after filing:

See? "Search current forms and PUBS". They're apparently recommending bars and drinking establishments in your zip code. Although I'm not supposed to have alcohol while on this prescription; I guess I'll have to delay my celebration!
I debated not sending in my tax this year. If the current Unpresidented resident of the White House refuses to release his taxes, then I feel like I shouldn't have to submit my taxes. I am disheartened that they are using our money to do terrible things like bomb Syria. If they asked any one of us for recommendations, I am sure we could come up with better ways to spend a dollar. For many years now, I have advocated for a multiple choice section on the 1040 inquiring as to where you want your taxes to go. Then we'd see what's important!

*And I'd like to add that it helps when you fill out your return in at least three different colors of ink from at least four different pens. I am sure the attending IRS agent thinks I'm "unstable" to put it mildly. But one pen ran dry and every time I went upstairs, there was a different pen at the ready...

Garden Clean Up and Othe Innocuous Postings

Nice clean garden beds! The wonderful warm, sunny (maybe a little windy!) weather begged me to begin the vernal ritual of garden clean up. It is so good to see tiny nascent leaves exposed and
bits of green shoots and snouts poking up. I start to recall all my horticultural fiends...

(There's my helper Lil' Robin the Good, overseeing my efforts and making sure that I don't miss random sticks and leaves. Actually, she photobombed me- appeared out of left field!) It took three full days to chop everything down and rake it into sizeable piles. I confess I haven't picked up all the piles yet; tired of lugging tarps through the gate...
We still have one small ridge of snow in the shadiest section of the yard, but Robin and I ran through it a few hundred times and tried to scatter it so maybe by today it will be all gone. Who needs a reminder of winter?!?!?
Bob and I are finalizing our seed orders and are hopeful that we'll have a beautiful and productive season. We'd better as we committed to being on a garden tour- in the end of August, which means we have to make the garden look good for an extended period of time. And what's blooming in the end of August?!!?! And we're on the tour the same day as a man who is a Master Gardener and probably has a gardening staff (with names sown on the pockets of their uniform tee shirts, no less) and I'm certain the tour will be in for a huge comparison shock. But we do have exotic sculpture and many "Items of Interest" to view.

I splurged and bought two really nice urns to adorn the soon-to-be-constructed terrace area. Many of our old planters- mostly half rusted cooking pots and the like- were simply falling apart. Don't worry: we still have a good assortment of weird containers, but I liked the color and size of these. (And they were a hopelessly good buy!) I know poor Bob is very busy working and making metal work for heads of state and royalty, but I just can't wait to start pulling up decayed boards and ridding our world of the rotting "deck"; remember, there was good sized clusters of grass growing in it last year.
The back of the BauHaus Chicken Coop will look amazing once that's done...
(You will notice- and be thankful for, no doubt!- that there was not even one reference to The Orange Menace in this entire post! He and his evil henchmen are busy destroying the environment and signing executive orders to permit the dumping of toxins into our water and rolling back regulations to allow the use of hideous pesticides... we are happy to be growing many of our own vegetables!!)