First Haircut

No, no, it wasn't me having a first haircut. I'm way past that. It was the garden, where I spent yesterday doing numerous tasks.

It started with me trimming the dead leaves off our banana tree. It always comes through winter looking a bit ragged, so I cleaned it up. (I suppose you could say I gave it a haircut.)

Then I decided to deadhead the yellow daffodils, which have almost all faded, and I swept the patio and trimmed the potted ferns. (More haircuts.)

I guess I got on a roll, because before I knew it I was on to major projects.

My assistant was hard at work too, as you can see.

Years ago, when Dave and I first moved into this space, he planted two types of dogwood among the roses. We thought they were the type of dogwoods that would bloom, like the North American variety. But these were relatively featureless shrubs, and even as Cornus plants go, they proved to be uninteresting. Their flowers were barely noticeable, their stems weren't colorful. And lately they were getting so big that they were shading out the roses and the other plants.

So, basically, we planted the wrong thing in the wrong place, and yesterday I solved the problem. I pulled them both out. I always hate to kill a perfectly good plant but in this case it was unavoidable. I feel guilty but I also feel relieved that they're gone.

Then I assembled our new, battery-operated lawn mower and cut the grass. (Hence the first haircut -- of the season, that is.)

Not too shabby, right? The grass is still a bit patchy in places but it will fill in as the spring progresses.

The mower works pretty well, though I didn't get through the whole lawn on a single battery charge. I had to charge them again to finish. (There are two batteries.) I'm hoping that's because it's a new mower and perhaps wasn't fully charged to begin with. It's also significantly smaller and lighter than our electric mower -- it feels like something made by Fisher-Price -- but in a way that's good because it can get into nooks and crannies that our other mower couldn't.

(I have the very American perception that a lawn mower should be a big, thunderous metal machine that runs on gasoline, possibly large enough to stand or ride on. European mowers made for city gardens still take some getting used to. If I stood on this little thing I not only couldn't ride it, I'd snap its axles.)

Also, I have to show you...

...our tulips! We have two of them. (We had three, but the pigeons bit the head off one.) This one (above) is growing beneath the bird feeder and promises to be yellow with ruffly petals.

And this one's growing in a pot on the patio. Tulips are a rarity in our garden, so I'm always happy when we have a few flowers!

(Top photo: A house leek, or hen-and-bitties as my babysitter back in Florida used to call them.)