Spring Cleaning

When I walked outside yesterday morning, the amount of spring gardening chores briefly overwhelmed me. I think I had gone out there to lay out the new landscaping - smother grass and mulch - but I saw weeds to pull and lantana to prune and a pond to clean. After a little weeding and pruning, I got to the mulching. I've been saving our newspapers during the past several months for just this purpose. I also had several bags of shredded leaves that I was saving for this as well.

I didn't plan to mulch the whole area that day, but I thought I would do as much as the leaves lasted. I spent an hour or so laying down newspaper - about four sheets thick - and then spreading leaves over it. I probably mulched half the area I needed to cover - one side being an arc near where I plan to put a stone path from the lawn to the gate. I've been planning to do this with broken concrete instead of for cost reasons. I hadn't looked for any recently, but there was a post on craigslist yesterday for someone to haul off broken concrete, so I plan to do that before the weekend.

We had plans for the mid afternoon, but I realized it was a good day to clean out the pond. I was going to have to get in it and clean all the dead leaves and plants out of it. When I was knee-deep, it wasn't bad - it was 65 degrees - but it took a little getting used to when I had to squat down to reach the bottom. I managed to finish and take a shower in time for our plans. Overall, it was a productive day.