March Malaise

I haven't posted in a really long time. Last week and this week have been really busy, but there was a kind of low grade depression there too. Every day was cold and terribly windy and on the weekends, I didn't want to do much else than sit and look out a window. Even my husband walked around the house and kept repeating "I just don't feel like doing anything". But this week is better and this weekend it is supposed to be in the mid-60s so hopefully that will make me all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed again.

Vegetable and flower seeds need to be started this weekend (should have been done last weekend) and fruit trees need to be pruned too. Any remaining perennial stalks need to be cut back, and I should start some seeds outside in flats, like poppies. The shed needs cleaned out, although the chicken issue is up in the air as my friend and the seller of the farm with the chickens can't agree on who should pay to have the septic renovated. So much to do. I didn't make it to the Philadelphia Flower show but my friend and I went to the Mid-Atlantic Garden show in York, Pennsylvania on Sunday. It was small but very nice. I bought two packets of Gladiolus and a Rex Begonia.

My favorite display featured a potting shed, gazebo, and chicken tractor partially made of reclaimed materials. Wouldn't you just love to have this potting shed? How adorable. And the gazebo was made of a reclaimed grain silo roof and barn timbers.

The red wagon thing is a chicken tractor which you can pull anywhere you want in your yard and let your chickens roam and fertilize and eat bugs. There are two chickens in that little white enclosure to the right of the chicken tractor. Anyway, it was a nice way to spend a Sunday and it got me excited again about planting and the thought that any day now, it will be Spring.

Last fall I wrote that I had purchased Winter Aconite and Hellebores and Pheasants Eye daffodils. Well, my hellebores each have one bloom (which was more than I was expecting). The Pheasants Eye are pushing their way up through the soil and I look forward to their spicy scent gracing my table in late April sometime. But the aconite were a no show. I planted 20 and not one popped up. I suppose I will have to call the bulb company this spring and let them know and hopefully they will send me more. Anyway, on the way to the grocery store on Saturday, I passed an older lady's house whose gardens I have always admired. And under the tree in her front yard was a rich spread of aconite, with the sun shining on it. It was so pretty, I had to stop and take a picture. I want aconite under my big trees just like this someday. How pretty on an impossibly cold, very blustery day in March.