Spring in a Bottle

Spring is in the air. It's been several weeks since we've had such nice, sunny weather. I decided to give my tiny flower beds a good spring cleaning. And, of course, Abby had to help me.

As some of you may remember, we rent a small house. Our rent includes weekly services from a landscaper. The little man barely speaks English, and has a toothy grin. He gives Lee the creeps. He does a very good job with the lawn but rarely pays any attention to the large bushes or fruit trees in the yard. (We have an orange tree and a pomegranate tree.)

Only once every five or six months will he make an attempt at pruning anything. Considering the giant shrubs lining our walk-way to the side gate and the huge camellia bushes directly blocking our front windows' views, I think the darn jungle needs to be macheted every other month!

Anyway, spring was in the air. The skies were blue, the clouds white, birds were chirping, and the neighbors were blissfully silent. Perfect.

I was ready to prune! I uncovered my gardening supplies from the darkness of the garage, handed Abby the kneeling pad to take charge of, dragged the dead-weight of the green waste can into the middle of the yard, and set to work. First to go were the dead limbs that could easily be pulled from the fruit trees. These were remnants from the few wind storms we had in November and December. Next went the wayward new growths from both the pomegranate and orange tree. Ouch! Seriously, why didn't anyone tell me that natural orange trees have thorns?!?

On to the flower beds. Most of my distraught plants were waterlogged. The flower beds have poor drainage and a lot of the gutters directly above them need work. So, they've been drowning these last few months. I helped them out as best I could, cleared away some winter leaves, and started tearing up the earth for the plant food. With Abby hovering at my elbow, moving the knee pad wherever I went, and just generally getting in the way, I finally had a good job for her.

I explained that the flowers were getting ready to wake up for spring, and they were hungry. Would she help me feed the flowers? Boy, did she jump at that! Holding the cap as a cup for the food, Abby got to sprinkle the tiny pellets into the turned up soil.

After one or two plants, suddenly it became an exercise in art. "No, no, I must sprinkle four pellets here and eight over here. And then eight, no, nine over here! Voila!" A masterpiece, a la Abby.

Exercising my patience as best I could, I allowed Abby to spread food around all the plants in all the flower beds. Whew! I was exhausted just from dolling out the pellets and counting to fifty-two hundred before Abby was finished with her art and we could move onto the next one.

But it was a great day. I can't wait for the flowers to bloom!