You make me feel like spring has sprung...

I've reached the limits of my outrage tolerance too early today and I just can't face the drug war news so you're getting flower blogging instead. Raking the yard has taken on a new urgency now that the wildflowers started blooming in the yard. I have to do it myself now because I'm the only idiot I know that will spend an extra six hours raking around the flowers. The violets are tough. You can rake right over them without damaging them much.

The bluets are the other hand are a lot less forgiving. I couldn't get a clear shot of these because it was so windy and they're so tiny. They don't call them quaking ladies for nothing. I've dislodged a few but so far I've managed to rake around them because there's not that many yet. I'm hoping to to get it done before they really get going. Last year they covered the yard so much it looked like snow.

The trout lilies are downright fragile. I hand pick the leaves from the periphery around them. It hardly seems worth effort because they're not that long lived but I really like them. They remind of living on the farm. The woods were always full of them and they were so cheering after the long New England winters.



I don't have much hope I'll get the raking done before they're gone past though. I have yet another new system to avoid putting out my back and or reinflaming the rotator cuff injury that flared up again recently. I only work an hour an day on it and bag the leaves while I'm sitting on a lawn chair. I need to get a stool instead that's a little bit lower but it's working out okay so far. And long time readers who remember by new-found bug-o-phobia since I moved here will be suitably impressed that I forged on even when I noticed spiders crawling around in the middle of the pile.

I've about given on burning the leaves although I still have to collect the branches for a bonfire. I have a separate basket for that and I pick those up by hand. G-d knows what the neighbors must think. Hopefully, that I'm such a brave old girl for trying so hard to clean up the yard and not that I'm completely crazy for inventing such an elaborate method for getting it done.