Cleaning Up After Old Man Winter

With fingers crossed, I think we have finally seen the last of Old Man Winter. This had to be one of the worst, longest, and coldest winter we have seen in years, and I am glad to finally say good-bye.

Now comes the all the work in repairing the damage that Old Man Winter has done to the yard. I gathered my supplies of garden gloves, my edging shovel, bags of topsoil, black mulch, and my rake. (and my camera too!)

Our flower bed behind the house was created a few years ago. Once there was nothing there but grass, but I decided the backyard needed to be spruced up a bit, and now, it is a flourishing flower bed that has matured quite nicely. For starters, I wanted to remove the curve I had in the flower bed so the flowers have more room to grow & expand.

I started off with temporarily placing my garden bricks in a straight line to see how the bricks laid out. They fit in place nicely, so I set them aside and started to cut out the grass that was in that little curve spot with my edging shovel. This is a MUST do for a flower bed – – remove the grass first before you fill with topsoil!

Once all the grass was removed, I started laying the bricks to complete my straight line flower bed border. Brick by brick, I over-lapped each one until the border was complete. Then, I filled the flower bed with bags of topsoil, then mulched the area. Mulch is needed in a flower bed because it helps hold in moisture for your plants.

I noticed that a lot of my perennials were starting to emerge from the soil from all the sun we were having lately. I was pleased to see this as it tells me that our nicer weather will soon be here.

The dogs enjoyed the day outside basking in the sun and kept a watchful eye on what I was doing, just in case they wanted to help Mommy out.

Bella is always silly and has to stick her face right in the camera!

Nikita watches everything that is going on & sniffs everything in sight!

Bella relaxing in the sun. She is probably wondering where it has been all this time!

Nikita is checking out the garden fence, just to make sure it is safe. Sniff, sniff, sniff!

Here’s my best side Mommy!

I love this photograph of Nikita posing!  She is so beautiful and loves spending time outside with Mommy.

We are so glad to see our weather finally coming together and even though we have lots of work to do, we are glad to do it. As for our raised garden, I got the first coat of polyurethane on the wood to help protect it from rotting, and we have our Miracle Gro garden soil & other nutrients ready to be emptied into the garden. I have already turned over the soil in the garden three times, so it is nice and ready for our plantings next month.  It is still not close to the time to take anything outside, as we have to wait for any last sneaky frost warnings in our zone 5 area to pass.