Sunshiney Day!

Today started off rather overcast but by lunchtime the sun was out in full strength! We'd killed the morning by doing some housecleaning and the girls had a bath that they were overdue for. Then after lunch we ventured out & the girls helped me pull weeds out of the garden. Now that they see some flowers coming through, they're more keen on getting the grass & stuff out of there. My flower beds have a looooooooong way to go before they could actually be considered a garden but they are looking better than they have in recent years. I hope the previous owner never drives by here to see how we've maintained her work! She had some really nice plants and well tended beds that I've let go to H in a handbasket. The gardening gene, wildly rampant on both sides of my family, seems to have passed me by. Murray's interest only runs as far as what it will produce for him to eat. If it's just for looking at, forget it. His strawberry garden seems to be off to a good start but sadly, the nicely potted rhubarb given to us last year has failed to thrive. We are the only people I know who can't grow this usually hard to limit plant. No one else can keep up with what their rhubarb produces and ours barely has leaves poking out of the ground. It might not help that it's right where Murray shovels all winter and has a bit of gravel stuck in there but doesn't rhubarb just grow wherever? How many people actually dig a rhubarb bed, fill it with fancy soil & then tend their rhubarb garden??? We seem to have the "black thumb" when it comes to plants.

On our walk today we noticed some little white flowers growing in someone's ditch. Figuring they were some sort of pretty weed, I told the kids they could pick some. The man who lived there was on his way to check the mail when he noticed us looting. He hollered over "Pick 'em ALL!!! Less whippersnipping for me later!!!!" Then he suggested that the kids go pick the ring of phlox growing around the base of their birch tree. Weeds in the ditch are one thing but this seemed like an actual purposeful arrangement & I wasn't sure it'd go over well with his wife! Then he decides to go get her so she can come watch the kids "enjoying" the flowers. I trusted he knew what he was doing but was a little apprehensive that he might have gotten it wrong. but he didn't. She thought it was just great that they were having so much fun, running back & forth from the flowers to the stroller, filling up our basket. She even told them to come back in a couple days because the ones they picked wouldn't last long & they'd need some more!