rain and some not-so-old photos

It’s pouring out there. I planned to spend the day working in the yard, doing stuff like, oh, raking up the gravel that is still scattered all over the place from the Three Ton Gravel Pile we bought for the french drain in December, and raking up the debris from around the fence that’s been collecting all winter, and getting the additional debris out of the "garden" just in case anything springlike might be trying to emerge. Oh, and doing something about the huge mounds of dirt that are also left over from the Great French Drain Project. And are just sitting in front of the house so we look even more like the creepy neighborhood hobos than we normally do. 

Since it rained all day – or at least threatened to rain all morning and then rained buckets later in the day and is still doing some major pouring at nearly 1 AM – I didn’t get any yard de-crazifying done. But I did manage one major accomplishment — I bought azaleas! I’ve wanted azaleas for years and years, first to replace our tremendously ratty rhododendrons in front of the house which were breathtaking during the week or so they bloomed every year and looked like plague victims during the other 50 or 51 weeks. Since I never did manage to dig them up in the previous nine years we’ve been here ("but they’re SO pretty when they bloom! And I’m SO lazy!") I was kind of happy that we were forced to dig them up when we put in the french drain. Along with the huge creepy house-obscuring  "yes-we-really-ARE-serial-killers!" hemlock. Which was, incidentally, the only hemlock in this state that is not dying of disease, and is the only one I really wished WOULD die.  

So now we have absolutely nothing in front of the house, so I went to look at azaleas today. At Lowes, which is probably not the best place, but the local garden center which IS the best place is very expensive. I know exactly nothing about azaleas other than they are beautiful when they bloom, so I was quite taken aback to find that the azalea care tags all said they need mostly shade and morning sun, which is the complete opposite of what they’d be getting where I’m putting them. So I thought, well, maybe I could just get some more rhododendrons. They ARE gorgeous when they bloom. And their tags said the exact same thing. Which may explain why ours aways looked so awful when they weren’t blooming. Well, they looked awful when they were blooming too, but you didn’t notice it as much because the blooms distracted you. (Incidentally, our neighborhood is FULL of rhododendrons. It’s like RhododendronWorld here. But they are mostly in the shade. Our house is just about the only one that gets any sun in the front yard at all.)

To get to the point, I finally stumbled upon some azaleas that were apparently a different kind from all the others – they like afternoon sun! And some shade too, which they’ll get in the morning. And, best of all – they bloom spring, summer, AND fall – not just spring like the rest of them. Which was quite exciting, since I was regretting that they it was probably already too late for them to bloom this year. Despite the fact that it could – and probably will – still freeze again. So I bought six, and maybe tomorrow it will quit raining long enough to plant them. And maybe I can actually keep them alive. Oh, they get really big, too – four feet tall and four feet wide.

So it was a sort of productive day. And at least I have six azaleas sitting in the yard as if to say, "Look!!! We’re making an effort!!!"

Ok, here’s a picture from two springs ago of the poor blighted rhododendrons:

Well, two pictures. Just to illustrate how beautifully they bloomed. Without the blooms, they were the rattiest things ever. We put the french drain in right where they are. It’s heartening to see these pictures – we cut the poor things down after they bloomed in mid-May last year, and I didn’t even bother with putting anything in the window boxes or the hanging baskets because the ditch was so deep I couldn’t get to them. And of course I never dreamed that the whole french drain experience would drag on until DECEMBER. Although of course I should have assumed that it would, since we are never people who get anything done in a speedy manner. Anyhow, the front of our house has been bare and dreary for nearly a year.

I am happy to announce that we are finally, finally FINALLY seeing some blooming things here! The forsythia is starting to bloom, which makes me very happy because my forsythia usually gets killed. It always has a gazillion blooms just on the verge of coming out, and then we get a freeze and it kills them. This year I think it’s actually going to make it – it’s supposed to be in the sixties all next week.

This is not the best picture – I didn’t take time to switch to the macro lens because it was just about to start raining. But it’s blooming! It actually looks better at this smaller size – not so blurry.

On a good year it’s loaded down with flowers. I think this will be a good year – it looks kind of scruffy because it’s just starting to bloom. This is my Garganto Forsythia – you can’t really tell from the picture how huge it is, but it’s probably 7 feet tall and is much wider than it looks here.

And to end on – the cutest kittens ever! Who are starting to look not a whole lot like kittens anymore –