Mary Mary quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells and cockle shells
And pretty maids all in a row.

Nursery Rhyme, and we don’t have to begin with Bloody Mary – that’s a totally different story!

I’ve been so busy in my garden, I’ve not taken time to blog – that’s the Margin!

But I’m super excited with all the spring growth going on. Flower bulbs that have laid dormant, clumping flowers emerge – ready to be separated and spread throughout the yard, as the Hellbores and Rhododendrons are in bloom.

The tree buds begin to unfurl, with the blooming magnificence of the Magnolia in my yard, and cherry trees in my neighbors yards, we’re blessed with flower litter everywhere.

The primrose are blooming, the hyacinth make their annual debut, while our little strawberry patch is perking up for the season.

All our gains from the wonderful Green Elephant event are in the ground – awaiting a final dressing of mulch in the coming days.

The yard needs mowed, even if it will likely result in a muddy mess, and it’s that time of the month when we are cleaning out bird baths {we use simple terra cotta bases with rocks and shells to keep the birds from falling}.

{Terrible image, I know, but my phone images aren’t uploading in this moment, so I’ll replace it in the future!}

Our Mason Bee hive had several plugs, but appears to have molded over the winter. Any feedback on that would appreciated – I’m still researching it myself.

In our drought last summer, we were unable to save “Baby Tree”; a small pine tree that was planted by a previous owner. I was never crazy about it, or the spot in which they chose to plant it, but I generally ‘live and let live’ in my garden, eradicating invasive species and giving away the extras. I’m letting the boys saw it down this weekend and it appears to be completely dead.

I was surfing Facebook and came across a Pinterest Link for Landscape planning.Like Christy {image below} — I also used the method of turning over the grass and covering the rest with newspaper. In addition, I left a trench for edging and making my mowing the smaller yard easier. The previous homeowners had purchased black plastic, flexible edging but I found that removing it actually makes mowing easier.

{and I love her Copyright text – may have to continue to update mine with some of what she has on her site. As follows: “All content on this blog is property of Confessions of a Serial Do-it-Yourselfer. You are welcome to share my content (to include one photo only) as long as you provide a link back the original post. DO NOT copy entire posts, or crop, edit, or remove watermarks from photos without written permission from me first. Thank you!” Copyright text is also an article in the writing…}

My aunt posted a Pinterest link to the fun article above {How To Create a Landscape from Scratch}, but in true Pinterest fashion, it took 15 minutes to find the original document; through the wormhole. I’m sure I’ll write on it more in the future, but Pinterest has become the self-hate site for every aspect of life. No one can ever live up to, create, or expect to have anything close to these carefully edited, filtered, images of someone else’s life and talents {and in some cases, sheer amount of luck or money!}.

I digress…

In my mature garden, I simply had to pull out a TON of ivy, mulch like crazy {it hadn’t been done for years}, we built planting boxes last spring {another future blog post}, and I’m constantly tweaking, adding plants, pulling weeds….well, much like a home, the garden is never really complete 😉

Thank goodness for #FF #FlashFiction — that is immediate gratification!

How does YOUR garden grow?