It’s that time of year where digging in the dirt take priority over house cleaning, food making, laundry doing, and just about anything else I can think of. Jason asked me a few days ago how I would spend my weekend 
if I had none of those other day-to-day things to worry about and I think I decided I would spend my weekends puttering around the yard. I’m not sure why I find planting things and digging out weeds so therapeutic, but I certainly do. This time last year I had JUST delivered a baby, so the spring happenings in the yard were largely taken care of by Jason. Come this spring I was more itchy than usual to get some dirt under my fingernails.
The winter stayed unusually warm so in February and March we were able to get a head start on spring yard work. The roses got a major haircut this winter. We probably filled at least 3 city garbage cans solely with rose trimmings. We also managed to do a pretty thorough job cleaning out the south flowerbed. This year it involved trimming a couple shrubs way back, clipping down/raking out all of last years perennial leftovers, and digging up a bunch more grape hyacinth (seriously the bane of my existence!). Jason repaired the sprinkler line I shoveled through last fall when we installed the pond, and trimmed the heck out of our apple tree for the first time in the 3 years we’ve lived here. We got the garden boxes ready to go and started our tomato seedlings under lights in the basement mid-March. 
April our productivity took a bit of a break as Jason joined a new department at work, we all got colds, and we traveled to WI. I managed to bring home a two new potted dahlias and some pansies. Throughout the month we started some cold crops in the garden–peas, beets, parsnips, turnips, and beans. Jason notes that this year the lettuce and carrots were basically a failure–It’s hard to call half a dozen carrots and enough lettuce for one salad a success. On a bright note, the rhubarb that was near death when we dug it out of the shade under a pine tree and relocated it seems to be loving its new sunny home near the garden, next year there should be enough for pies, cakes, and muffins!
We were motivated to get back at in in May, but only got to work on yard projects between rain storms. May rain for Salt Lake was over 200% of normal and it seemingly all wanted to fall during the 
weekends. Mind you this is only something like 4-5 inches for the entire month, but it sure did feel wet to us! Ironically we installed two new rain barrels and they were filled within 4 hours of bringing them home. It has been wet enough we haven’t had the opportunity to use any of our stored water yet. At the beginning of the month two boxes of hosta starts arrived from WI thanks to my mom and flat rate shipping boxes from the USPS. They have certainly been enjoying the rain and I hope to have better luck getting this batch established. Last week during a day off for mental health, I weeded the front roses and put in a few new creeping phlox to fill in some bare areas.
This Memorial Day weekend we spent several days going crazy in the yard. All of the tomato seedlings were planted out including a cherry tomato in the flower bed right out our back door for convenient eating. The garden now also contains a hill of squash. I don’t think I’ve ever planted squash, so I’m hoping that the kids like it, and with enough butter and brown sugar I will tolerate it. We decided that the north flowerbed which is basically weeds would be a good place to let 
pumpkins run this year. Then we decided we should weed the entire thing by hand, making sure to move the few remaining perennials I felt any attachment to (so basically all of them). Two days later and another full garbage can and we have two hills of pumpkins surrounded by weed block fabric and a bunch of happily relocated perennials. I spent the better part of this afternoon weeding one remaining section of the north bed. We discovered some new type of invasive menace was surrounding my ornamental thistle from WI. The backstory on this particular plant is that it has been in my parent’s yard as long as I can remember, and quite possibly my great-grandmother’s yard before that. I wanted a piece of it in Utah so sometime circa 2010 we hauled a piece of it back from WI in a bucket. Turns out it was completely water-logged and we almost killed it. Thankfully the thing has 9 lives, because about when it was getting its bearings, we dug it up again and moved it to our new house. Now to find the poor thing was being threatened by some invasive wild onion (at least that’s what they smelled like!). Hopefully it is much happier with its new weed-free accommodations!
I think that’s where the yard stories end for now. It looks like the rain will be ending this week which leaves us to water things and watch our garden grow. The roses will be in full bloom soon and the grass is growing like mad and loving all the rain. Next weekend I will make another round with my new lawn edger. Perhaps there will be time to sit in a lawn chair with some lemonade and enjoy all of our hard work. Then again, what’s the fun in that?
PS It is worth noting none of this would happen except that both boys LOVE being outside with us, and also recently transitioned to a simultaneous napping schedule. Bliss!