Spring Clean-Up

I can see a correlation between the weather and my blog posts - the nicer the weather gets, the fewer posts I make. I am spending more and more time in my backyard. Yesterday I made the rounds - checking on my spring bulbs and trees. For the most part I am very pleased with what I see. It's such a miracle to see the daffodils poking up through the snow and the buds ready to burst into life on the trees. However, there is always the disappointment of the things that didn't make it through the winter. It seems that something (probably moles) ate the bark off one of my new apple trees. And something (probably deer) ate the tender shoots and buds off my mock orange tree. They also decimated my shurbs in the front of the house. Removing them (the shurbs, not the deer) will be one of my bigger summer projects. We've been in the house for 14 years and the shurbs are one of the first things I planted - I remember the day very clearly. My brother Dan dug the holes and we tried hard to keep from planting them too close to the hosue. Over the years I have learned a lot and I'm ready to try my hand at a more artistic arrangement in the front of the house. With temperatures in the low 60's and lots of sun the kids and I spent much of yesterday cleaning up the debris of winter. It's amazing what surfaces as the snow melts.