No Worms, I Promise

It was a dream of a spring day yesterday, with blue skies and sunshine. Olga wasted no time getting out in the garden to lie in the grass and gnaw on her Kong. She's just as eager as the rest of us for winter to be over!

The census turned out to be no big drama. The website even worked! It took slightly longer than I expected, because I thought they'd just want to know how many people lived here. But no -- they want to know names, occupations, employers, relationships, nationalities, religions. They wanted to know if my spouse was a man or a woman and whether I identify with the gender I was assigned at birth. I don't mind that they ask these questions because, after all, how else will we understand the composition of our communities?

I filled it out for both me and Dave. "I told them you're a Mormon black woman from the Ukraine," I said to him later.

(Note to census officials: I did not. Don't fine me £1,000!)

Here are some garden updates. These random bulbs are growing in a pot with a hydrangea. They were in Mrs. Kravitz's yard waste bag last year, and I thought, "Well, that's a shame. I'll plant them!" I had no idea what they were -- turns out there's a small daffodil, several grape hyacinths and, I believe, an allium.

Our flowering quince is putting on a better show than it ever has in the past. Maybe it just needed a few years to mature.

This came up of its own accord. I believe it's known as lamb's ear? We'll see what it does -- I put a stake next to it to keep Olga from stepping on it.

This is one of the burdocks I grew from seed a couple of years back. Some of them bloomed last year and then died, while some of them overwintered and will presumably bloom this year. Funny how they're on different timetables. This one looks especially vigorous and might become huge.

I mentioned grape hyacinths -- they're blooming now too.

Finally, on the downside, this is our poor banana tree. It got pretty badly frozen but I think it will pull through. The stalks feel pretty solid and they're still green. We'll see what happens!

I also potted my one corncockle seedling and moved it outside, and then worried in the middle of the night that I'd put it in the wrong kind of soil. Now, in the morning, it seems insane that I was even thinking about it. Funny how middle-of-the-night thoughts are sometimes so bizarre and obsessive.

The title of this post stems from the fact that, as reader Ellen D pointed out yesterday, several recent post titles have all concerned worms and slugs. That was purely inadvertent on my part, I swear!