I’ve been a bad, bad blogger. This is, in part, because I’ve been busy with work and it can be hard to come up with something to write after a long day… but let’s face it, I’ve also got Spring fever. When I’ve got an extra half an hour, I don’t want to spend it at the keyboard. I’ve been spending a lot of time cleaning up the yard and gardens, planting bushes, and even some cold-season veggies.

My new quest, though, is to get some wildflowers growing behind my fence (where my giant trees used to be) to help hold down the dirt and give me something to look at from my office window. In my imagination, it looks like this:

But, frankly, I’ll be lucky if any of the tiny little seeds I spread — which resemble dust more than anything I recognize as seeds —  take root at all. There’s also the little matter of my practically non-existent grass to be dealt with. My entire yard was a bit of a wasteland when I bought the house, and I made some good progress last year.

In the front yard, we went from this:

To this:

But in the backyard the scene is a bit different, thanks to dogs — not just my dog, but other dogs too. When they get to chasing each other around in circles I end up with something that looks more like a racetrack than a yard. So this year, I suppose I have to find a way to address that. (Tips for types of grass that are low maintenance and stand up well to abuse would be much appreciated.)

I tell you all of this to help you better understand why I am being a super bad blogger and probably will be for some time to come. My apologies, but there are flowers to be planted and vegetables to be thought of.