Before the Rains Came

I'll admit, I was once a fan of violets.

They are so pretty and as spring begins to break they carpet the world, poking their happy purple faces out from their lush green leaves. They, along with crocuses, are one of the first tell-tale signs that winter is mostly over.

But don't be fooled. They are like a scourge across my yard. They are lovely and pretty and make for an excellent ground cover -- until you don't want them somewhere. Then, they infiltrate the soil with their spidery roots, which you will never find the end of.

The other bane of my existence is the honey locust tree. I say tree because there is one in the front yard, and it's lovely and provides excellent shade and has cute little white blossoms on it right now. But weren't locusts one of the plagues God rained down on the Egyptians?

Surely, my yard hasn't done anything like enslaving God's chosen people, so I don't understand how this plague came to spread it's monstrous destruction. If the tree in the front yard had kept to itself, I'd be glad to have it. However, this tree spread. And spread. And spread. And spread. Until every time I go to sink my shovel into the dirt, it hits one of the millions of roots running like some sort of plague-spreading interstate just underground.

Oh, and I forgot to mention, they have thorns.

I must have hundreds of these little saplings growing all over my yard. Last year, I tried to dig a bunch of them up and wound up looking like I'd tried to give one of my cats a bath. The trees attacked me, their roots nearly broke my back, and though I got what seemed like a ton of them out, there are several tons left.

For now, they provide a nice screen between my yard and the empty lot next to my house, which people walk through to get to the street behind.

So, as I began digging my much-anticipated vegetable garden today, these two beasts of Beelzebub reared their not-terribly-ugly heads, making my progress so much slower than I anticipated.

Before I started on the vegetable garden, I worked for quite awhile on another bed Uncles Keith and Pat built in the front yard. I didn't take a before picture of this one because it was too horrifying to document, but the picture above is after. I'm actually quite pleased with the outcome.

I planted some of the perennials I got on Monday. They all said sun to part-shade, so I hope they do OK. They're under the shade of (ahem) the honey locust tree, but I think the sun filters down fairly steadily. We'll see. I really hope they don't die.

I'd say the planting is about half way done, and one more day of solid work should see everything safely in the ground. I had hoped to finish today, but it started raining just in time for the Tigers to start playing, so I figured it was fate. Here's what I got done before the rain started:

It doesn't look like much, really, but it was incredibly hard work, especially with the honey locusts and violets getting involved. And actually, after the rain started, I dug up some more but I didn't take a picture because of the wetness going on outside.

Tomorrow, there's some raking to be done, and some further attempts to get the massive remnants of violets and those horrible, horrible trees out of there, and then planting -- my favorite!

Once everything is in, I'll take pictures of each plants and post them with their names so we can properly track how they are doing.

I had also hoped to fit my first cooking experiment in this weekend, but with the coliforms, I'm not ready to use any unnecessary dishes. In fact, tonight my dashing fellow bought a pizza, which we ate on paper plates. So, that solved that dilemma. Hopefully only one more day of boiling water to go!