Everything is Subject to Change

 One of my heirloom peonies from my grandmother on Dad's side

I was out weeding early this morning and getting more and more dismayed with the work we have to do yet.  Just as I was getting frantic that we'd never make the June 9th deadline for the bus tour, I received a letter in the mail today telling me it was no longer a problem.  Apparently the YMCA didn't have enough people interested in the trip, which was quite varied: their first stop was to be a church near Peshtigo, then to Bay Beach, next up was an antique store, followed by a homemade ice cream store,  then Mayflower Greenhouse, and finally, our garden.  That's a long day. 

 Do you see the neon green, shiny metallic 'bee' in the flower? 

I was kinda surprised at my own reaction, which was one of pure relief instead of disappointment.  It just wasn't possible to have everything looking good by next week Tuesday, so this is a nice reprieve.  The organizer of the bus trip said they still want to schedule a trip out here, but it will probably be next year.  We'll be ready by then.  (Yeah, SURE we will!)  I would like to try to talk them into coming a bit later in the season but despite my misgivings, I'm hoping they will come here in the future.

The lily in the above picture is one that opens every year around Joel's birthday which isn't for over two weeks yet, so that goes to show how accelerated this spring has been.

I worked on weeding the East Berm today.  I'm almost done, and hauled over five 5 gallon pails of weeds to the chickens to scratch through and search for bugs.  I hope to get up early tomorrow morning to beat the rain and get the berm planted with some annuals.  I do have many volunteer moss roses and Dahlberg daisies coming up which is great!

Mom came down today too, and weeded the front half of the north quarry hill; it looks much nicer now.  We worked together until Carl and Joel came home and wanted an early supper.  We were done eating by 6PM and back outside to work.  Now since the bus trip isn't coming, we decided to make some changes to the front lawn and the flower beds in that area.   

 Viburnum 'Blue Muffin'

Last night, we had discussed the lawn situation by the Pachyberm and had decided to raise up the level with a few trailer loads of dirt from our old compost heap.  This coming wet stretch of weather would have been the perfect timing for grass seed.   But now that we don't have to worry about tours until the 24th of June, we decided we may as well bring the biggest rock we have to place yet-(we call it Piano Rock as it looks a bit like a guess what?  Yup, a grand piano!) to the front of the house.  I'm not sure how we're going to move the rock,  should be a topic for another blog post!   At any rate, we may as well get done ripping up the yard dragging big rocks in place before we plant grass. 

We worked outside until 10PM.  We'll see what the weather brings for the weekend, right now, it's looking to be a long-shot at best as far as rain goes.  I can plant annuals in the rain, though it's not one of my Top Ten favorite things to do...

  This is the area I worked in today on the east side of the quarry garden.

Well, dozing off again, time for sleep.  We'll see how the rest of the story unfolds........................Karen