Mom left early Sunday morning, so as she hit the road, I hit the gardens. It was time to start cleaning out some of the leaves.

This is right under the maple, so it’s where the leaves are the thickest.

It didn’t take very long. And as you can see, I don’t remove every last leaft – just enough to let the plants breath. It’s mostly hosta and heucheras under here, but I do also have some native plants.

Including Jack-in-the-Pulpit. You may remember that Mom brought me some from her garden a couple years ago. And I’m happy to say it’s thriving here and there are several plants now.

Sadly, it doesn’t look like my trilliums have come through. When we were driving to the quilt show on Saturday, the woodlands on route were blanketed with trilliums, so I should be seeing them now. But there’s nothing. I’m debating on getting more to try again – the Norway Maple may just make it too dry for them (plus the soil is fairly sandy here)

My native geranium, however, is thriving. I have two clumps of it (one on either side of the fence) and I think I may add some more.

The one outside the fence gets more sun and it has just started to bloom. In a few days, both clumps will be covered in those pretty pink flowers. I think I need to get a couple more clumps.

I had some woodland poppy that bloomed at this time too (beautiful yellow flowers) but last year Dave accidentally weed whacked them . I didn’t think they’d recover, but when I was out there taking pictures of the geraniums, I noticed this…

It’s going to take a bit for it to bloom, but at least it’s stil alive.

My black Cohosh is doing nicely.

There are also two clumps of this – and the one that gets more sun is much further along, but the other will catch up eventually. It gets spikes of tiny white flowers that look like they were made for fairies.

I’m not seeing any sign of my ostrich ferns, and like the trilliums, I think it’s too dry for them under the tree.

But one native that is thriving, I didn’t plant at all…

Wild violets! I used to pull these up from the beds (but I’ve always left them in the lawn). But I’ve since learned that they are vital to Fritillary butterflies.

Most of these are in the catio – but I think I’m going to dig some up and move them to the woodland garden.

And these, of course, aren’t the only natives – there’s sneezeweed, wild bergamot, cardinal flower, blue lobelia, false sunflower, smooth aster and coneflowers. And… I may have a whole order of natives coming in the next couple of weeks… We can look forward to Maypop, New Jersey Tea, Heart Leaves Aster, Spotted Beebalm, and Michigan lily!

I will never have a completely native garden, but I’m thrilled to include them wherever I can!

Excellent progress was made with the tiny needle this weekend.

Rupert helped me decide on the colours I wanted to use for the next section (the fairy’s skirts). And after that he settled in while I stitched away

We got two sections of the skirt completed, and made a bit of a start on the third, and biggest section. I can probably finish that section up this coming weekend.

This is certainly moving along much faster than I expected. As mentioned, I bought this pattern book some time in 1993 (I was about 14 years old). I didn’t make anything from it until the early 2000s, when Samantha had her first child. I made the Fairy Godmother for her, and I remember it being an absolute slog of a project! It just shows how time and age can change your perspective – I’m enjoying EVERY stitch of this one!

I mentioned that Mom was coming for the weekend… and this is why…

We had plans to head to Chatham for a quilt show! It was held at a very large church, and they had the sanctuary absolutley filled with “Comfort” quilts which would be donated after the show. Isn’t that wonderfu?

In the other rooms of the church (there were many – did I mention it was a very large church?) they had all the quilts made by guild members.

There were literally hundreds of beautiful quilts… but judging by the pictures I took, I seemed to like the applique ones the best.

Check out the amazing birds on this one…

And all three of us (Dave came too)

Loved this chicken quilt.

Especially the inclusion of this saucy foxy.

Naturally this cat one caught my eye. But if you look close, you’ll see it’s not applique, but embroidery! It looks like it’s probably machine embroidery but still amazing!

As was this black-work embroidery with an automotive theme!

But my absolute favourite quilt….

Isn’t that just stunning? It was huge (probably King-Sized). I couldn’t get the whole thing in the picture!

Things are going pretty well in the seed department.

The snails have mostly survived the bulking of their soils.

The Dahlias were DEFINITELY doing well. They’d outgrown their spot so it was time to move them. They are now on the catio porch. They can take the cold nights, just not frost – so the porch will protect them from that for a couple more weeks. Then it will be safe enough to put them in the ground.

Also on the catio porch…

TWO more trays of freshly planted seeds. The top tray is a mix of different sunflowers, since none of my sunflowers in snails made it (I’m still salty about that). The bottom tray is a mix of my last seed order, which just arrived on Thursday – Cosmos (yes, more), Nasturtiums, Scabiosa, Queen Annes Lace, and more Foxglove.

And I’m VERY excited …

We have Sweet Pea seedlings! The plan is to plant these in a pot with a trellis, so even if I only get a third of the seedlings going it will be enough. The seedlings on the far right, last row should be the Mini Mike melons. But Dave was moving things around the other day and I’m a little worried he moved the tray. Mini Mike could be in the very back row which isn’t sprouting at all. I hope I’m wrong.

The other trays, both planted two weeks ago are all seeing sprouts too. The top row of pics is a mix… cosmos, snapdragons, foxglove etc. The bottom pic are marigolds – Eskimo and Strawberry Blonde.

Outside…

Peanut service at Squirrelington’s has been temporarily suspended.

At least until the seedlings are strong enough to take some digging in the beds. The second pic is all Foxglove. Foxglove must be surface sown, so any digging around them is a real problem. I doubt I’ll get anything in this bed now, but I’ll give it a couple weeks just to be sure.

The lettuces and spinach are starting to look good, with true leaves appearing.

I can’t remember if I told you that I picked up some Red Cabbage seedlings at the nursery – but I did. And the White Cabbage Butterflies have already laid eggs on them. I’m going to have to keep a close eye on these!

Furby has offerd to do garden patrol but I’m not sure he’s much of a defence against cabbage worm.

And the Cornflowers are sprouting!

I said this year was going to be all about seeds over ready-to-plant… and it’s looking like that…. of course, I haven’t really hit the nurseries yet… nor have several of the pre-order plants I bought earlier in the year shipped yet….

I guess I better work on expanding some garden beds!

The May Garden begins with the slow decline of the daffodils. That said, there are still many blooming – as I said, I have quite the collection

I bought a large mix of bulbs a few years back so I don’t know the name of many of them. But there are others that I do.

This one is called Mount Hood. It’s the biggest daffodil in the garden. It starts off with a light yellow trumpet, but then it fades to this perfect creamy white. It’s one of the longest lasting daffodils too. It started blooming almost two full weeks ago.

From the larfest, we go to the smallest. And my absolute favourite. It’s called Minnow. It’s taller than Arctic Bells and Rip Van Winkles, but the size of it’s blooms are on par. You can see by my hands, they are teeny!

And last – the most fragrant. This one is called Pipit. As you can see it’s a soft, creamy yellow and it has the most wonderful perfume. Most of the daffodils don’t seem to have any scent at all, so this one really shines! It’s go mid-sized blooms.

There’s still a few late-blooming daffies to come, but the garden is definitely giving way to the tulips.

Now I don’t know about you, but I kind of prefer the tulips when it’s a little grey and cloudy, and they are closed up tight.

Now, I did say that most of my tulips were Darwin and Triumph Tulips because they last longer… but there are a few outliers.

I bought a mix in 2024 that had a bunch of fringed tulips in different colours. So far this year, this is the only one that’s appeared, so I expect this will be the last year for them.

This funky one was bought as part of another mix in 2023. Again, so far, this is the only one that has appeared. But still – three years is good for a fancy tulip!

My absolute favouite tulip, I didn’t plant at all. It was here when we got here.

It starts off as a yellow with just a touch of red along the edge, and a dusting of blush across each petal. But as the blooms get older, they gain more and more of that blush.

We know that Ruby, the lady who owned our house lived here with her son Robert. She passed in 2013. Robert died in 2020, and we bought the house in 2021. Our understanding is that Robert wasn’t much of a gardener, so they must have been planted by Ruby. That means they are at least 13 years old!

There’s quite the little patch of them. I say every year that I’m going to dig them up and spread them around, but I never do. In truth, I’m a little afraid to. What if I move them and they don’t come back. Probably best not to mess with a good thing.

I’ve also more of those species tulips I told you about…

This one is called peppermint stick. Don’t you just love that dark pink underpetal?

And this one is called Little Beauty! Such pretty, bright cerise blooms.

And there’s much, much more on the horizon.

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve awoken to find Burton in the bed, staring at me. As soon as he realizes I’m awake, he moves in for a snuggle – but that’s not what he really wants.

He wants me to get up and open the bedroom curtain.

From 8 am to about 10 am, the bedroom floor is the perfect place to catch a sunbeam.

Spring has brought the return of my favourite gardening companions…

Yup! The toads are back!

Garden pest control is back on duty!

The first mossy sock is done, and I have a VERY small start on the second sock. In theory, I could probably finish this pair by the weekend. But realistically, it won’t happen. I might get some time to work on them tonight, but Thursday night is grocery night, and Friday Mom comes. I think these will be a next week finish for sure.

Because the weekend was a write-off, there was no tiny needle plying. So instead I’ll share a little treat Dave got me last week.

You may recall that I have a rather silly, rather large squishmallow collection. What I’m not sure I’ve shared is that about 1/4 of them are sharks (1/4 are cats, 1/4 are dragons, and the last 1/4 are random ones that made me laugh)

Don’t ask my why… but I LOVE sharks. Always have. And the squishmallow sharks… well they just absolutely delight me! So when we stumbled across this….

Dave insisted I had to have it. It’s actually a “Snackle”… made by the same company that makes Squishmallows. They are essentially squishmallows hold snacks. Most are holding a real brand – like a bag of Doritos or a roll of Mentos…. (I have a shrimp holding a can of Pringles).

But yep… this guy’s snack….

Is a human foot!

Is that hilarious or what????

Or wasn’t depending on how you look at it.

You’ll recall that I had my sleep study this weekend. I had to be there at 9 pm Saturday night. And since Saturday was cold and rainy, there wasn’t much to get up to in the garden during the day. I opted to do some overdue cleaning of my bedroom and office. Floors got vaccummed, things got dusted, clothes got washed, and I even got three large bags of items together and in the car ready to be donated to Goodwill.

Then came the sleep study. They advise you to bring something to do before lights out (there’s no TV or internet) so naturally I brought some knitting.

Remember these?

A purple sock of my own design that got started last year, set aside and completely forgotten about. Seemed like a good time to pick it back up and give it some love.

Only it wasn’t. I got a few rows in an realized I’d mis-crossed cable. I was up to pulling back several rows, so tucked it away and pulled out a book I’d brought with me just in case.

But I didn’t get more than a few pages read before the nurse came in to hook me up to eleventy billion sensors and wires.

Okay… it was about 20. But it felt like a lot more. Then it was time for lights out. And I proceeded to have the WORST sleep I have ever had in my life. I normally sleep on my left side, but the wires weren’t long enough for me to roll over that way. The mattress felt like an under-inflated air mattress, and while I had two pillows, they were both hard as rocks. I think I slept maybe 4 hours total between 10 pm and 5 am when they unhooked me and sent me on my way. I hope it was enough for the doctors to diagnose!

Because I was up so early, I woke Dave up when I got home (about 6:30 am) and took him for breakfast.

Dave LOVES going for breakfast, but we don’t do it often because neither of us enjoy the crowds. But we were early enough that it was just us and three other sets of diners. Our waitress told us that on Sundays it doesn’t really start to get crowded until 8:30 am. So we have a nice little window between 7 and then if we decide to do it again.

After that we came back home. Dave tackled the mowing and weedwhacking.

Although I was running on auxiliary power – I knew if I went down for a nap, I’d have another night of bad sleep. I can’t nap for a short window. If I fall asleep during the day, I’m out for several hours. So instead I unwrapped the catio windows! Every fall, after I bring my house plants in, Dave puts up some heavy plastic over the screens of the catio porch. It helps keep a lot of the cold wind off the kitchen, and gives us a dry place to store things. That means every spring it has to come down and that’s usually my job. It’s held to the window frames with eleventy billion screws.

Happily, Dave thrifted this diminutive drill that fits my hand much better than his big drill does. It’s also lighter and much easier for me to handle. I still took a long time – it was A LOT of screws, and Dave can hear a screw being stripped from across the yard – so I had to take my time and do it right. I also had to move a lot of the stuff we had stored there. But by mid-afternoon, it was done and there was a nice, fresh breeze blowing through the porch.

I still have to clear out a lot of the stuff stored there over winter, so no pictures yet.

But the boys can at least enjoy some fresh air from the comfort of the cat tree, even on rainy days.

In a couple more weekends, I’ll get the mess cleared out, take some house plants up for the summer, and my happy place will be cozy and comfy once again!

That said, the rest of the day was pretty much a write off. I was completely out of steam. We went out and got some more paint, grabbed dinner, and I spent the rest of the evening vegging in my chair before an early bed! And boy was is nice to sleep in my own bed again!