Comment Allez-Vous?

Or in English "Hey, how ya doin' ?

I'm doin' fine, thank you.

Temperatures are rising and daylight is lengthening with every passing day. By the end of February it will be early Springtime in the Valley once again. Usually it sneaks up on me, but not this year.

We've been getting ready for Springtime ever since October.

Today we planted our blackberry patch along a particularly sunny and soggy section of the Back Wohl. Progress on the Wohl itself stalled temporarily while our efforts were needed elsewhere, but it will resume in a couple of weeks.

Also planted my new flowerbed under the kitchen window today with two beautiful hydragea bushes that have been potted since purchase last year. They are actually not beautiful just yet, but itty bitty leaves are sprouting on the ends of the dead-looking spindly branches so they should be looking very pretty come Eastertime. I know from experience they just look dead and lifeless during the winter, but they are faking and will fill out with huge leaves and blossoms once again during the happy warm season.

I have the seeds to plant my yellow and orange "sunflowerish" bed across the front walk from the sweet peas in about two weeks. Sweet peas seem to have taken a little growing time off, too, and I expect one night they will have a freakish growth spurt and we'll walk out the door in the morning to find a tangle of vines tripping us about the ankles.

Um, yeah, no pictures just now. This is more of a catch up post.

I'm painting a pretty description of colorful happy spots that are at this moment NOT photo-ready. You see, the truth of the matter is that for all of this accomplishment there has been a whole big bunch of digging and dirty shoes and sweaty clothes. Not to mention some swearing at the dread scourge Bermuda grass. I loathe and despise Bermuda grass. But we're not mentioning that right now. Back to dirty, sweaty, tired, aching, aging adults who require hot baths and naps just to recover from yardwork (me and Mr. Last). This is the ugly underbelly of the beast, my friends, but you might as well know the truth now. We make it look good in pictures, but behind the scenes it's not so glamourous.

We are old.

And we like to garden.

Deal with it.

In other news...

I'm currently reading three different books, with a couple more waiting in the wings; I impulsively started knitting a sweater for one of the GrandBoys and then immediately interrupted impressive sweater progress because I had an overwhelming need to teach myshelf to crochet hexagons. Oh. And I baked a batch of outstanding peanut butter chocolate chip cookies.

For ten minutes I laid out the atlas pages for my wallpaper-the-bathroom project, but when that appeared to need some careful thought and calculation (and perhaps repainting the bathroom), I wisely bundled it all back up carefully and slid it back under the bed for another day.

Other than that, things have been pretty quiet around here lately.

Au revoir, mes amis.

(French for "Good-bye, my friends.")