Then it looked as if summer arrived early when temperatures went up to 90 degrees and my garden went from 0 to 10 in the space of days. Trees and shrubs leafed out; flowers were everywhere and by chance I had picked another good week to be off.

Mulch, 12 cubic yards ordered the very last day of March, is slowly being put away. For one, with so many plants in the garden, you can't really dump a wheelbarrel full of mulch in the beds. The Spouse fills a wheelbarrel, brings it to me and I transfer the mulch, a bucket at the time. It is tedious work, but it brings you up close to the soil and plants. Early weeds are easily pulled out, mulch is fluffed up around the plants. Once a section is done, we move on to the next, and the next. Slowly, the mulch mountain in the driveway disappears and one of these days I will actually be able to park in the garage again.  

 Last year I was busy ripping out overgrown evergreens, or rather, The Spouse was busy ripping them out, I merely orchestrated the whole thing. As we were working on this little garden the thought of making a memorial garden for my mom came to mind. After all, it is a sad fact of life that people in our lives pass on, but wouldn't it be nice to have a place of remembrance, right there outside of the living room window. I picked yellow flowers, after all, yellow was mom's favorite color. For fall, some mums were added.

This spring, with the daffodils blooming in mom's garden, I wanted to do a bit more. First, not quite happy with the little pond, some remodeling was done. The hole was dug a little deeper and wider, a bigger liner was used and once refilled, the stones, large and small, were added.

Yellow daisies and pale yellow pansies were planted. The bright yellow pansies from last year had come back bigger and better and this whole section became a vision of green and yellow. Guppies, which overwintered in a small tank in my bathroom, were put back outside. Mom, not fond of animals which shed, made noise or brought in dirt, would not have objected to guppies in her pond. And while she was also not a fan of gnomes in the garden (dad was), I think she would not have objected to the pensive giraffe, siting quitely in the corner.  I was born on mom's 36th birthday, now, many, many years ago. Soon, I will putting new flowering plants on the grave in Holland which holds both mom and dad, but home, here in America, mom has a little piece of garden, all of her own, a place to remember her by, every day.