Ready.... set.... get out your spade!

Last night it was 37 degrees. The last frost date here is April 15 (and sure enough, two nights ago it there was a light frost) but weather.com tells me it's warming up and won't get cold again for (at least) the next ten days... so I say it's safe!

I've already planted out perennials that I know won't keel over under a light frost, along with one brave tomato plant. My hostas have returned to me, and most of my hydrangeas are flushing out. This will be my first real spring in my own house with my own dirt. (We moved here last June, the day before I started a rigorous full time job that lasted three months, so the yard was rather neglected last year) but at least the previous owners left me with a blank palate- no plants other than the (seemingly required) four rounded holly bushes in front of the porch and one random iris hiding beside the steps. Just weeds, crabgrass, and those blasted fire ants (they dashed my hopes of wearing sandals last summer!). I dragged myself home from work, usually around 6pm and dead tired every day and then went straight to the garden to work till dark most days. All the while Hubby (a yardener, not a gardener) laughed at me.

The layout looks a little rickshaw, but when the hellebores and Edgeworthia chrysantha bloomed in the ugliest of winter days, quickly followed by Carolina Jessamine, forsythia, and finally azaleas and "Cherokee Brave" dogwood (the last two still glaring at me from their too-small nursery pots), there is no way someone couldn't gaze upon them without being filled with happy feelings. I may have been gardening since I was a little girl, but this is my first full year of being a real gardener.