Y is for Yard

Y is for Yard When I say yard, I mean gardening. Not yard chores like mowing the grass, because that's the hubby's job. And that's about all I let him do outside--except he keeps sneaking around to cut (I won't call what he does to shrubs and trees pruning, because it's almost damn murder!) plants or rake where he's not supposed to. But anyway, this isn't a husband rant, it's about one of my all-time favorite things--gardening (which I get to by way of Y for yard). My forte in the yard is flowers. There's very few flowers that I don't love. My weakness is growing from seeds, though, I can't get the hang of that. I either water them too much or too little, so I only transplant in my yard. I do very few annuals anymore, maybe a few here and there but the majority of my yard is perennials. Our area is a little harder because it's so dang hot in the summer, we have to have more drought tolerant plants. But yet a lot of tropicals don't do that well here, either because our winters get cold. I do love getting out there and getting my hands dirty, pulling weeks, planting and dividing, pruning, just messing around. I can feel sluggish and yucked out and when I go work in the yard, I get all energized and happy. My maternal grandmother lived right next to us, and so I was very close to her, but she died when I was six. I know I got my love of gardening from her, because I have very early memories of her tulips in the front yard, and after she was gone, most of her bulbs kept blooming. She had a greenhouse, and I can only guess at all the gardening knowledge she could have given me had she lived longer. (The gardening bug skipped a generation, my mother has a brown thumb.) Here, have a picture of one of my miniature gardens: