At 5:20 on a Thursday afternoon there isn’t any place in the world I’de rather be than in my garden. The way the lights and shadows hit the various pots and planting beds, the peaceful quiet, yeah this is good living. I started this garden about 30 years ago with absolutely no knowledge or skills. I’ve never had a landscape designer, I have not hired people to do my hard scapes it’s all about trial and error plus a lot of blood sweat and tears. Is this garden perfect? Absolutely not, but does it bring me peace? You bet.

I started out in April this year when we had a rare balmy couple of days. My garden beds were over run by grass, weeds, over growth you name the garden nightmare I had it.

Late May last year I lost my mom after a long battle with dementia and I spent the entire summer at her home preparing for a rather large estate sale, thus my gardens suffered enormously. My husband who is my grass and yard man knows absolutely nothing about any of the plants around the yard. What’s a weed, what’s a flower. So the weeds took advantage of the situation and I’m embarrassed to say I had Jack and the Bean Stalk visiting my yard. So this spring everything had to be touched, the beds had to be raked, weeds pulled, shrubs trimmed, plants divided. It’s amazing to me how just one summer of neglect can reap such chaos in the garden. The husband being a good sport is learning gardening 101 and 86 bags of mulch later our beds are looking neat and tidy again.

The whole time I was working in the garden I kept telling myself to stay away from the nurseries. I new it was still too soon to start planting because you know late April in Nebraska things change in a heart beat. But the weather was fine and after last years neglect I couldn’t wait to get my hands dirty. How cold could it get!!!

I just couldn’t stay away. I thought I’ll just go to one nursery and look, then I figured I’m here so I’ll just p/u a few things. Some Dragon Wing Begonias, Geraniums, Caladiums, some spikes, ferns, vinca. Just a few things to get my baskets started, not only was my cart full but so was my car! No worries it’s beautiful outside and we, all of us deserve this so much. I come home, get the load back to the deck and start dumping baskets mixing dirt, and filling baskets with lovely little flowers. I am in my element and so happy. That’s until the clouds started to roll in and the distant sound of thunder. Then thunder in 2 directions right on top of each other. My 2 largest pots and 2 half baskets off the end of the deck are beautifully planted and I feel a drop of rain. Well this is good I won’t have to water. Yeah, the heavens opened and then the hail came. We had about 2″ of hail that looked like snow. When I got out to check my freshly planted pots I discovered them shredded to bits. The next couple of weeks we had everything from a hard freeze to snow in May. Lots of sheets covering planters. May proved to be cold and unpredictable. What didn’t survive, all my baskets of Caladiums on the back fence. They were so beautiful I didn’t even get a picture. Note to self don’t plant Caladium until June in NE! They are tropicals and don’t like to get cold. Lucky for me my other plants have survived and are now thriving after many weeks of looking sad.

Ignore the hose winder. This is real life. So for today things are lovely, getting cleaned up and almost ready for a social distancing party.

Thanks for stopping

Shelley