The concrete driveway

March 12—super cold today; cold as if winter had come back in full force.  Spring is still hesitating on the threshold and the garden holds its breath in expectation. There is the same bitterness in the air as one may expect in January, and the sky and grass have that same somber look as then.  Still… I went outside to work on the garden, just as I’ve been doing lately.

With the cold wind behind my back and ominous gray clouds above my head, I finished working on the last flowerbed under the north window, where most of the roses sit beautifully waiting for sunshine and warm days.  So that’s it!  The hardest part is done!  Now it is the minor stuff such as cleaning the back porch, retouching the paint on its floors, mending the fence where it needs to be mended, painting flower pots and things like that… and of course, planting…. planting planting! 

I can hardly wait for the plants to start coming to local nurseries! Birds and little creatures of the garden are as excited for spring as I am!

March 13—today, I finally decided to attack the back porch and clean the piles of dead leaves that get to accumulate behind and under furniture, flowerpots and such during our winters.  The culprit are the huge leaves of the grapevines; for each winter they make their resting place along the wall of the house in that part of the porch.  They won’t go away, or even move during high winds.  They just pile and pile up and stay there for months and months; always weighing down my patience.

Rigoberto, the concrete guy, came by today to start working on our new parking space.  I’m excited!  

   

March 14—did I say I was done cleaning the garden?  Oh that wind of the other day brought in so much leaves out of nowhere! So today I rake and collected two more of those huge bags of leaves, roots and whatnots that were scattered everywhere.   

I also decided that it was time to finally pulled out the mule pine that should had never being planted there in the first place, many years ago.  I feared the intensity of the job, due to what I thought were going to be huge roots, but to my surprise, it wasn’t as hideous of a job as I thought it would and the pine went out easily and without the least effort. 

Second day of the concrete project.  Rigo took out all the sod yesterday and today he started building the parameters where the cement will go.

After I collected more and more leaves off the garden floors today, I also tied back some of the long canes of the climbing roses, removed a few of the tulips that, for some inexplicable reason I’d planted in the wrong place last fall, and started working on removing all the rocks where the little old pond used to be.  That’s when I got the idea of making a new pond on the other side of the new fence now.  I’m already daydreaming with what I want to see there!  

Remember what the little pond looked like last spring?

March 15—The concrete is being pour today.  Rigo has worked so hard and he’s doing such a good job! 

This afternoon the Fisherman helped me with several of the projects that needed be done in the garden.  He helped me tied up and nailed vines supports to fences and walls, and he also cut down that tree trunk I let stand in the middle of the garden for way too long.  

This was the tree that was damaged by winds when we were renting our house and then later we cut down when we moved back here.  I asked the Fisherman then to leave the tree trunk alone, because I was envisioning doing something creative with it, but it never worked.  Last spring, I tried to cover this tree trunk with morning glories and moon vines on three different occasions, but these little seeds have a mind of their own and every time they flew away and reseeded themselves somewhere else in the garden.  

So now whatever was left from that tree is out, and I can hardly wait to plant something else in that spot!  But what?  More roses?  

The concrete job is now done!  Rigo did such an awesome job!  Soon our new gypsy caravan will be here!  Can hardly wait!