Not much to report... yet

Spring has sprung, but since I decided to downsize the yardening, my spring activities have been rather curtailed. Last night my SO and I did visit Home Depot and Lowe's, to check out big pots, but so far I have spent very little money on plants and such. That is a BIG difference from previous years.

I also did not start any plants inside, although I kept the seeds and may return to that activity in future years, depending on how the raised beds shake out. The one exception is rooting cuttings from my coleus mother plant. This variety is still my favorite, although I plan to add a yellow one this summer, to accent the purple smoke bush.

(The cuttings are in the dish drainer in the kitchen sink, to protect them from Beau the Feline Destroyer of All Things Nice. This was a lesson learned after finding a broken glass on the kitchen floor one morning.)

There has been some puttering in the yard, though. I am eliminating some plants that just never did well, moving other plants into the subsequent holes, edging this and that, etc. Nothing very exciting.

This afternoon, I decided to mow the yard, as it is looking rather scraggly with its spring growth. But alas, the mower would not start. After spending thousands of dollars on a zero-turn riding mower and hundreds of dollars having it serviced, it won't go. Very aggravating. It's stuff like this that pushes me toward just hiring someone to do the mowing.

Feels like spring

Sunshine, temperatures in the 50's, sun low in the sky. It could be March or April instead of November. The first seed catalog arrived before Thanksgiving, which of course has me thinking about next year's yard and garden. But instead of just thinking, today I was doing.

Since I adopted Clio from the Fort Wayne Pitbull Coalition, my backyard is a mess. She and Watson zoom around, and Clio's big feet churn up the sod. Recent rains have not helped.

Then there is the digging. The two of them actually caught a mole. I didn't know there were moles around here. Voles, yes, moles, no.

So now I am puzzling over how best to rescue the yard. To protect the non-raised beds, fencing of some sort seems to be in order, but I don't want to obscure the plantings. There's "invisible fencing" and electric fencing, but I have not had much luck with those in the past because eventually they stop working and figuring out where the problem is is a hassle.

The dogs are pretty well behaved if I am out in the yard, so I'm hoping if I provide a barrier that is more visible, I can teach them to not cross into the beds. Toward that end, today I edged the hosta bed and erected a short white wire fence, stabilized with not-as-short white pickets. I may add some fluttery tape, the better to see the boundary.

The grass will have to wait until spring to be rejuvenated. Maybe overseeding with a tougher variety will help. I am also contemplating stepping stones of some sort on the north and south sides of the house, so at least I have somewhere to walk above the mud.

And I am open to suggestions. Anyone?