These Early Summer Days

Posted on by Erin Bartels

The last few mornings have been picture perfect. Calm and bright at sunrise, with birds and squirrels and one little bunny spotted in the dewy yard.

Beams of pure sunlight break and scatter when they hit the trees, whose leaves are fully green and fully extended now.

The sky that begins as a thin blue canopy deepens to full summer. Clean, puffy white clouds skid across the blue in the quickening breeze.

The trees rustle as morning gives way to day. And we busy ourselves with the last week of school, loads and loads of laundry, and watering the garden transplants.

Summer is coming, faster than we imagined it would back in March. It’s still light at 9 PM, and morning follows fast on evening’s heels. I turn the calendar page and marvel.

Welcoming Back the Shade Garden

Posted on by Erin Bartels

Spring has truly sprung over the past week in mid-Michigan, and the shade garden I expanded in the back yard last year is beginning to bloom…

Bleeding Heart
Bleeding Heart

I’ve been busy outside destroying and covering up my neighbor’s sidelot (with his permission) because I’m tired of looking at the mess of English ivy, poison ivy, weeds, dead leaves, weed trees, and trash out my dining room window.

Red Epimedium
Red Epimedium

Now it has been mowed, poisoned, shrouded in black plastic, and covered over with mulch.

Daffodil
Daffodil

Over the next year or so it should suffocate.

Poesy Daffodil
Poesy Daffodil

Then the mulch can be raked back, the plastic can be removed, and the remaining mulch and dead matter underneath can be worked into the soil.

Yellow Epimedium
Yellow Epimedium

At that point, it should be ready to sustain something beautiful and/or useful.

Emerging Ferns
Emerging Ferns

In the meantime, I’m on the lookout for some cheap or free pots and will try to stage a nice array of containers full of flowers on top of the mulch.

Pulmonaria
Pulmonaria

Two days after that big project I am still sore from moving edgers, swinging an ax, and shoveling and dumping and spreading mulch.

Fading Hellebores
Fading Hellebores

But the view is much improved.