Catching up

Oops – sorry about that. Didn’t mean to leave you looking at Wilf and his new Vegas friends for quite that long. Here – look at some rhododendrons instead:

 

That’s last year’s picture, of r.Sappho, taken on May 16. This year, on May 30, Sappho hasn’t cracked a bud yet – getting close, but we’re about two weeks behind in the whole flower department.

We enjoyed our time in Las Vegas, then moved on to San Diego – spent about a week mostly hanging around Mission Beach, riding bikes and walking. There was some fishing in San Diego, no catching though.

April was a busy month for me with quilting – I took a two workshops with Martha Cole, went to a quilting retreat with friends in Qualicum Beach and another retreat here in town. Those adventures merit their own blog post, which will follow.

It became clear that waiting for warm weather to get to the serious garden clean up was going to be a long wait. We’ve been out hacking and pulling and digging and hauling. Things are definitely looking better, but we have many wheelbarrows full to haul yet.

Last spring we decided to renovate the back yard and remove a bunch of lawn, especially the slopey bits. We went from this:

to this:

and now we’re at this:

Much better. On the east side of the yard similar lawn reduction occurred. What lawn that is left needs a little work, which means….

Sadly we have not been able to convince the dirt to come up to the back yard by itself, so we take turns hauling barrowfulls up from the driveway. The moss has pretty much been beat into submission, the rain has abated enough that it isn’t a mud hole – we’ll get there eventually!