May 18

Hylie and Flower

Last week, R walked into the house cradling a stuffed animal. I was distractedly thinking "Which toy is that? It looks so lifelike." Something about R's mesmerized facial expression made me look more closely. Then the toy's ears twitched.

That's how we found out we have baby bunnies living in our backyard. My heart was pounding out of my chest as I helped R get it safely back into its burrow without hurting it, and we invoked every dire consequence we could think of to make sure she never touches one again. Still, they're her little friends. She lays out trails of carrots and lettuce leaves for them. She studies where they go and leaves cups of water where they are likely to need them. She picks grape hyacinths and honeysuckle and leaves them by the entrance to the burrow "so their house will be beautiful." She will lie on her stomach in the grass for an hour, watching them hop out of the burrow, eat some grass, and hop back in. So far it looks like there are only two babies. She named them Hylie and Flower.

Every morning before R wakes up, I check the back yard for the mother rabbit. I always see her hopping around, so I know the babies are ok for another day. And every night before she goes to sleep, she whispers, "Mommy, that baby bunny was so soft. The softest thing I've ever felt."

Waiting for June 1

It's not really warm enough for peppers, cucumbers, melons and tomatoes in Colorado until early June. So while we're waiting to plant the front yard garden, we made one more lasagna bed today in the back. Probably for zucchini and summer squash.

I hope R never outgrows her love of raking dirt, because it comes in handy.

The salad garden is really taking off.


Looking north from the back fence, through the lilacs.

Watering in the garden apron the Easter Bunny gave her.

I am so excited for these peonies to open all the way. I love them against the silvery blue-green artemisia.

The first radish harvest!

Dirt and Manure, So Excited

We got the manure-covered newspapers all ready on Wednesday evening.D has all the lumber to reconstruct the balusters and railings on the porch, but he can't ever get to it because every week I have garden projects for him. I hope that his part of my garden projects is almost finished.

D took off work Thursday and Friday, and on Thursday morning, two tons of soil were delivered and dumped on the front lawn. Peat, compost and topsoil mix.

There was a lot of shoveling and leveling and raking. I took a break from shoveling compost long enough to get dressed up for the mother daughter tea, and then came home and started right back in again.

Then Friday morning, D built the fence. R was off school and helped a lot.

Here is the fence, almost finished. I am imagining how it will look with beans and tomatoes and cucumbers bursting out of it.

Front yard vegetable garden

Last summer we watered just enough to keep our big corner lot minimally green and weed-free. It took a lot of water, and we felt guilty about it. We need to re-landscape with a lot less grass, but there is only so much time and money. All winter long, I wondered. Could we grow vegetables in the front yard without setting off the neighbors' hillbilly alarm? Turn a big patch of water-hogging lawn into a drip-irrigated vegetable patch?

There is a whole front yard garden movement, it turns out. "Food not lawns," etc. I found pictures online of neat and ornamental front yard vegetable gardens that gave me courage. We bought some natural willow fencing, for a tidy border and to keep out the neighborhood dogs and wildlife. We decided to try a modified version of a lasagna garden, where you layer newspaper right on top of the sod and then put soil and organic amendments on top. The newspaper blocks light and kills the grass, but slowly decomposes and makes rich, worm-friendly soil underneath. No digging or tilling.

We marked out a 20' X 13' area, and put wet newspapers right on top of the grass. The size was determined by how much fencing we could afford.


20 bags of aged manure went on top of the newspapers.

R was a big help, but she eventually wandered off to draw on the driveway with her chalk from the Easter Bunny. She says this is a picture of "me as the Queen of the World."

Here is why there have been no posts recently

We have been busy arranging to have two tons of dirt dumped on the front lawn.

More pictures and an explanation shortly.

May 4