I can't wait to get my hands in the dirt. I still have a little cleaning out to do that I didn't finish in the fall. We've had one sunny day and I had too much to do that kept me from getting out there. I'm waiting for the next sunny, warm day to rejuvinate one of my favorite hobbies.

Do you like gardening?

I LOVE gardening.....like you I just can't wait until the weather settles into more "gardening-friendly" temperatures. I'm out there now every single morning taking stock of what perennials are peeking up and planning in my head where I want to plant new things, etc.

Spending time in the yard and tending to my gardens is so relaxing to me - my favorite thing to do when "life" closes in on me is to visit my own gardens or plant something NEW.

Is there anything more exciting than watching those first early flowers poking their green stuff out of the earth? The snow's still melting around the periphery of the garden, but the tulip greens are beginning to pop up. We only just started gardening when we bought this house a few years ago, so we're still experimenting. We planted over 100 tulip, crocus and daffodil bulbs in the fall, so we're very excited (like proud parents?) to see our little babies showing off their array of colours.

I too love to garden and even enjoy the feel of dirt under my fingernails...but have never been able to conquer my squeamishness with worms. I have a lifelong *thing* with worms. It's not a fear, I just have always (since a toddler) passionately hated stepping on them, and have never been able to touch one without almost throwing up. I even used to have nightmares about it, and still do if I see a picture on the tv of a whole lot of them squirming in a pile. I can handle snakes, spiders, you name it, but these poor, little, respectable worms? No way! It puts a bit of a damper on gardening, because I can't stand the possibility of my fingernails cutting into a worm...so I wear good gardening gloves.

Is this just a personal *thing* or can anyone else relate?

I don't really have THAT much of a problem with worms NOW but did as a little girl....I can vividly remember standing on the back of my brother's stroller when my Mom would walk us in the park because the worms on the sidwalk would be getting "squished"....I didn't CARE for that much!!

These days it's SNAKES that give me the "willies". Gosh I hate them....they absolutely make me feel like worms make YOU feel Eagle Heart.....I just can't STAND them. We have copperheads and harmless black snakes around here but ONE is just as YUCKY as the next regardless of "danger" with the poisonous vs. non-poisonous.

I kind of forget about worms, snakes, and just about everything though when I'm working in the garden.....I just become totally absorbed in planting and tending.

Oh how I still hate squishing worms. I was always late for school on rainy days because it took me so long to find a way to walk without squishing worms. It was much harder back then because they were ALL OVER the sidewalk...and as much as I hate squishing them, it does concern me that there aren't as many of them now as there were back then...

I can't help but tell the story about how one night, only a few years ago, I was walking home from choir practice. It had just rained, and the glare of the streetlights on the wet pavement made it impossible to tell if those little things on the sidewalk were worms or twigs. No kidding, it took me almost an hour and a half to walk a few blocks. I was crying by the time I got home because I couldn't stand the thought of how many worms I had killed on my way home...and yet I couldn't pick them up and throw them back in the grass either.

I've always figured that when I get to the point of being able to pick up worms and throw them back into the grass, I'll finally be the truly integrated, graceful, healed person I've yearned to become.

Since it's still not even close to happening, maybe I should find another yardstick for measuring my healing progress and just proclaim myself as *integrated* as I'm going to be at this moment in time...and become totally absorbed in planting and tending WHATEVER needs to be planted and tended...

I just had to giggle about worms on sidewalks again because our five year old cat Sam seems to have just "discovered" worms....he pokes and prods them on the sidewalk and they squiggle off in another direction and he'll follow them and continue trying to get them to play with him. What's really funny is when he sees a stick on the sidewalk and pokes it and it doesn't move - he seems to be totally confused as to why THOSE WORMS don't cooperate!

When I was a kid my father, my Uncle and my brother and I use to go out into the big back yard after a hard rain with flashlights and catch nightcrawlers (worms) to take as bait fishing. When I found out that they put these poor things on hooks while alive and squirming, I use to try to push them back into the grass. I got my first spanking at age 8 for that reason and was never allowed to help again...

I thought of you worm people a bit ago when I walked to our neighbor's. There were a couple lying on the sidewalk. I almost stepped on them.

It's raining agin today. I'm hoping tomorrow will be my first day in the garden.

Pam, I'm taking stock of our bulbs too. They're creeping up. I can't wait. I have a feeling this is going to be a great week with flowers beginning to bloom. We've had so much rain. Everything is turning green. With the help of the sun we should be seeing flowers in no time.

What flowers do you have in your gardens?

The first to bloom in my garden are the Lenten roses, heleborus.

Dotsie, I take it there's no snow mixed in with your rain? We're getting a day-long downpour, but it can't decide whether to be rain, snow or freezing rain. It's too cold for there to be worms on the sidewalk. So theoretically, I could safely go for a walk today. But I like it right here.

The tulip greens are showing. And possibly a few crocus buds too. I'm still new at this, so don't know one from the other, including the weeds...I just cover up that unknowing by resolutely acknowledging the weeds as flowers whose virtues haven't yet been discovered (it's not my line, I think I read it in Ann Landers eons ago, and it has always spoken its own special meaning into my own personal floundering and inner weediness).

[ April 02, 2005, 05:56 PM: Message edited by: Eagle Heart ]

Talk about working in the garden!

I've been building a stone patio for a couple of weeks. I hired someone to remove a huge area of asphalt (part of the driveway that went into the back yard) and build a patio, and it's like he ignored everything I asked him to do and built exactly what I didn't want. He laid it in concrete, when I wanted irregularly shaped stones that thyme could creep through. So I got a huge pile of stone dust and some stones delivered and I've covered up what he did. Everything's in place now, but I have to go back and make it level in a few places.

Then I went back to the compost pile and carried over barrelsful of compost to enrich the soil where the asphalt used to be.

I moved 9 shrubs (a lacecap hydrangea, 2 stephanandra, 2 limemound spirea, 2 spirea bumalda, and 2 spirea little princess) from other parts of the yard. So now I have to replant the front yard! and I still have plenty to do in the back.

I had 5 cubic yards of organic mulch delivered.
The good thing is that if he hadn't removed that asphalt, I'm sure it'd be there forever. It's the only sunny place in the yard. So now I have a sort of little courtyard surrounded by fence on two sides, with space for vines.

Has anyone else laid stones?

[ April 11, 2005, 08:48 PM: Message edited by: DJ ]