Fun in the Garden

That was sweet of Chris to post about my gardening yesterday. We are blessed to have bought a home with a professionally landscaped garden and I'm trying very hard to learn about how to care for it. Some work we hire out and some I am trying to do myself. This week I'm trying to tackle some pruning that I don't trust to our "mow-and-blow guys" (as great a job as they do at what they are good at). I'm no expert pruner, but at least I won't damage certain plants by shearing them. In the last two weeks, I've pruned the four Abelia, several of the many Liriope, another shrub whose name I forget, and--yesterday--the two Japanese boxwood. I also tore out some Pachysandra to transplant some Heuchera that was in a spot with too little water. When our gardeners come next, we're going to have them transplant a still-small camellia that is in a spot with too much water and too much traffic to the spot where the Heuchera was living.

I pruned while John was napping, then transplanted while John played in the back yard with me. He thought it was incredibly fun to watch me dig holes. I was excited when he saw what I think were his first earthworms (apparently we have many worms in our yard!). Heretofore, his main exposure to earthworms was an oft-watched episode of Curious George on the subject. It was a touching experience for me because we were on Day 2 of "no TV in the house." It's very painful for me but a goal of mine to reduce or, ideally, eliminate TV. So, because I turned off the TV and because I took John outside, he got to see real worms in person instead of watching them on the boob tube.

You can hardly tell in this photo but John's jeans are soaking wet, he has mud on his face, and his shirt is removed because it was soaking wet too. He had lots of fun watering my newly transplanted Heuchera.