Floods, gardening, and what were they thinking?

Remember how I mentioned that we had a lot of rain in March? I think it was actually the wettest month on record. In fact, for a few days our commute was really screwy. The way we normally go to work was flooded and then our alternate route had flooded as well. One night it took us over 2 hours to get home after sitting in bumper to bumper detour traffic. Not fun at all. This photo was from our normal route the day the road finally reopened. As you can see, it's till pretty flooded. Not fun. This photo was taken April 5th. By now traffic is back to normal. Rivers and lakes are starting to return to normal levels. Unfortunately there was a library near this intersection that is still closed. They've already filled multiple dumpsters. And they may even still be pumping out water.

On the home front, to make the garden all nice and pretty we ordered 4 yards of mulch. In hindsight 3 yards probably would have been sufficient, but we found places to lay it down a little thicker, etc.

The largest bed that we put it on is in the front of the house. This first photo is what it looked like when we bought the house. A patch of grass completely surrounded by beds with perennials. How exactly are we supposed to get in there and mow it? Yeah, we thought it was pretty stupid. So we ripped it out. :) We planted more perennials. It looked horrible all fall and winter. Basically a big mud pit. I tried to put down some wood shavings to act as much and to keep the mud under control, but the wind ended up blowing a lot of the shavings away.

With the delivery of the mulch, we finally were able to make it look nice. Ah, so much better and no longer a huge eye sore. I'm sure the old owners thought we were crazy. Turns out they had just redone the landscaping before they put the house on the market, and then we tore it all out. And I'm sure they weren't pleased with how the mud pit looked. But finally it looks good. I'll probably add some more things- maybe some perennials, maybe some annuals. Who knows. The only annoying thing is that some of the stuff I planted hasn't come up yet and I'm starting to think it may not. I know I planted 2 more peonies, I transplanted a calla lilly, I think only 3 of 5 day lillies have sprouted, and I think there are even one or two other things that haven't come up yet. Hopefully they are just slow, but I may have to see what kind of guarantee the plants had. Or dig around a bit and hope that maybe I just planted them too deep. Either way, in a month or two it should look nice.

We stopped at the grocery store last night on the way home from work. My food desire of the day was hot dogs. We had the dogs but didn't have buns. We also needed charcoal. And then we agreed on spicy curly fries to go with the hot dogs.

I have to say, being pregnant is good for getting what I want for dinner. :) Chris has been good about going along with my desires, even when it included sloppy joes, which he dislikes.

Anyway, as I was sitting in the car while Chris went into the grocery store I looked over and saw this sign at the cart corral. Really? Have we gotten so addicted to text speak that we can't write out the word "for"? And it's not as if there wasn't space for it on the sign. Blech.

Back on the gardening front, remember my earlier post where I said we planted the asparagus? Well that was about a month ago now and every time I looked at the bed I saw nothing. Well not tonight! It's probably because I was looking at the bed from the deck or from across the lawn. But last night while we were grilling our hot dogs we went down and actually looked at the bed. Out of 20 crowns that I plants, about 5 or 6 of them have now sprouted. Yay!!!! I really don't understand why, but this makes me very excited. I've included a picture with my finger next to a stalk to show you how skinny they are. But that's ok. They'll get better. I can't wait until next year when we really can start harvesting.