I'm digging a patio area in between two beds to create a secret garden area. I also picked up some cool wrought iron garden chairs on FB Marketplace for $10 that I have already bought the Rustoleum to paint them when the temperature allows.

To be outside and safe, it is the only the garden that offers an outlet for my pent up energy. And so I am doing things that I normally would and in fact should do later on...well into April maybe. For example just yesterday I removed the protective wrap/covering for some of my Japanese Maples so hoping that there are not any unusual cold snaps between now and say...May 1. Stop stop I keep telling myself!

We have five bluebird nesting boxes on a quarter acre suburban lot. I've been watching sparrows, wrens and bluebirds quarrel this week. The bluebird society suggests removing the nests of sparrows but I'm too soft hearted to do that so DH will be building more boxes to gift to willing neighbors.

I have some things to move, the first being a mature tree peony before it leafs out. I also have a giant mess in the vegetable garden, didn't get around to cleaning up last fall. Will need DH's help to move the plant supports (they're big for the tomatoes, pole beans, etc) for crop rotation, but not planning on planting anything soon other than maybe peas mid-April or so, so no hurry on that end of it -- just the big stinkin' mess that I have zero motivation to tackle...but have to.

I also have a butt-load of seedlings under lights to tend, same as every year.

I am almost embarrassed to admit it since so many are experiencing radical lifestyle changes but my life with the pandemic is not all that different than my life before the pandemic. I am single, live alone and more or less retired. And we are just coming out of winter, which is a very slow period for my business anyway and that and the weather tend to keep me homebound to large extent through this time of year.

I have lots pf projects that I could have done over winter....but didn't :-) I was more than happy to spend my time reading, streaming and working on the few business projects I have during my slack period. And the occasional outings and visits with friends and family. Those of course are missing now, except for the daily dog walks.

The last couple of weeks have been great here weather-wise, so I have been spending more time out in my garden. I am working on a full spring clean up, planting sweet peas and I have a small planting area that needs a complete overhaul. As rapidly as I work these days with advancing age, that should keep me busy for the foreseeable future!!

But those projects that could have filled my idle hours over winter.........not holding out a lot of hope that they will get done any time soon :-) As katob noted, it is not a matter of not having enough time. It is really just a lack of interest!!

I am on my first week of stay at home time, when I found out last week that we would be staying home for a few weeks, I was so excited that I would have time to get the yard all cleaned up for spring, but of course, mother nature had to ruin my plans and it has been raining or snowing all week. So I haven't gotten much done outside yet. Next week looks better and I plan on taking advantage of the time to get everything cleaned up and take care of some areas that have gotten a little out of control. I am also expanding my veggie garden which I bet a lot of people are now doing in these uncertain times! Working in the garden keeps me sane in this crazy world that we now live in.

Happy gardening!

Bluebird nesting boxes! Let me add nesting boxes to the list. I have a couple old pallets which the kids (said) were going to become a clubhouse but never materialized, and for some reason I don't mind making birdhouses.

I'm still sticking to the less is more approach though. I used to clean up and haul everything to the compost, now it gets thrown on the lawn or paths and is mown and thrown around as mulch. It looked messy for a couple days but no compost turning and the mulch should help with weeding. I'll probably buy nice mulch for the edges, but for the inner parts of the garden... no thanks.

Strangely things aren't that different here either. Other than skipping the daily trek to work and no eating out it's far from a struggle. I'm grateful for how lucky we are.

Ground still wet in places here. Have to take care not to slip and fall (arthritis). Recreation centre closed so repair work on the garden is very welcome exercise. Love the snowdrops. Buds on the hellebores. Greenest thing, the primulas.

I had annual leave for last week, which was canceled due to all this. It was also my first work from home week. I had planned to use my annual leave to do all the "heavy lifting" in the yard before it gets hot. I do this every year. I have been surprisingly busy with work, but I'm out at lunch pruning and cleaning up. It doesn't matter if I'm working in old yard work clothes. After work I've been out filling new planters and tending to the seedlings. Luckily, before everything hit, I had stockpiled everything I needed except mulch, so I'll just keep chipping away at everything until it gets done. I might try to take the next few Fridays off.

Yesterday I cut up plastic milk cartons to make labels for my trees.

I have incrediablely less time on my hands for many reasons.

I have several conifers to plant, a few transplants, 20 yards of mulch to go out and 1,500 of gypsum to go out.

Any volunteers?

I've been sowing some annuals and just pruning a few plants. Our weather has been rainy and cold today, but by Saturday, it's supposed to be close to 60 degrees with some sun. Perfect garden weather. It's wonderful to see so many plants coming to life. Happy gardening everyone!

Lots of stuff has been transplanted and I'm ready to move onto building the raised beds, but the wood wasn't delivered today. What a disappointment, and now it's supposed to rain for the weekend. At least the week was beautiful! Hellebores are coming into full bloom, corydalis and chiondoxa are opening up and the earliest daffodils are open. A weekend of rain and warmer weather will really move things ahead. I'd say it's spring... a couple weeks early though.

Cole looks great! Nice job. I bet he appreciates losing a few pounds :)

What a pose -- Cole should be a doggie model LOL!

Cole looks great!

'woody', my hair is getting a bit long these days...hint, hint :).

I love that dog! I was able to meet our landscaper right before this thing began, so we have a preliminary patio and landscaping plan for our home. Tweaking it and communicating through email/text right now. Have not spent a ton of time focused on this though, since I'm working from home. I still plan to follow through, but it is no longer a priority with all of the awfulness going on. I am guessing that the project will be moved back to closer to fall once our landscaper is able to work again.

Once things are back to normal, I have a lot of plans. House was built last summer so there is only a lawn and some very basic landscaping installed. Need to fill in the beds, add new beds, plant a tree, add scrubs and flowers, add a bird feeder and build up some spots in the lawn that sank over the winter. I was so excited to do all of this but now am just praying we get through this.

katob - Cole's hair grows pretty fast and we don't take him to the groomer frequently enough :-) The picture below used to be on the groomer's web site! Compared to what the groomer does, our hair-cutting effort was pretty pathetic! Cole failed to make it into training at the service dog facility we volunteer at. They clip the poodles very simply so that was our model when we did the haircut.

This was what he looked like after being in the garden with us for a while not too long before the hair picture at the groomer's....

You can see two poodles in this picture of a few dogs in the play space at the training facility. Aiming for the simpler cut those poodles have is easier than aiming for the fancy cut our groomer does! But we still have a way to go even to achieve a decent simple cut!

Now that Cole's hair is cut the next project is garden clean-up - weather permitting.....

trying to convert my large perennial beds to shrubs, bulbs and favorite easy care perennials only. Taking out all perennials that cause me to avert my eyes when passing by.

transplanting shrubs, dividing the perennials I love that will tolerate It. Seems like a monumental task but hey.....

Yeah, I'm looking at maintenance as well, but some low maintenance plants are just boring... and I get enough of that at work... but luckily there are plenty of exciting things that don't give too much trouble. Cercis- have you reduced the size of any of your beds? I'm thinking not, but just curious. Sometimes a few larger shrubs that can catch and hide leaves etc are still much less work than lawn and I don't need more lawn. Actually I prefer shrubs to groundcovers since I can still have bulbs and small things under the shrubs before they leaf out, and then no worries the rest of the season.

On the other hand, I don't know if my raised beds are going to reduce maintenance at all. The old vegetable beds were beginning to fill with flowers and bulbs which I thought was nice (although weedy), but now that they're all fancy and new I feel obligated to grow vegetables, and vegetables are almost as much work as a lawn.

shantony39's tags reminded me of this post from my wife's brother's Facebook page. (I understand it has circulated on Facebook for some time.)

"The truth is, it's not so boring at home. But it's interesting

how one bag of rice has 7,456 grains and another bag 7,489."

I have deep cleaning the cars. Once again after taking about three days to reduce the brush pile to zero, I made a resolution to chip/shred the brush more than once a year. I have distributed the mulch, re-positioned some stepping stones in the Azalea garden.

I still have Service Day. Service the lawn tractor, the weed eater, chipper/shredder, the blower, etc. I have the parts, so it is just doing it.

I want to pressure clean and stain the back porch, paint the bath room, the list goes on,

Yes, vegetable gardens are work -- but you can eat the vegetables. So worth the effort!

I've been out weeding the vegetable garden and taking down plants from last fall, I didn't get around to it then. We've had some good rain, makes for easy weed pulling. It's not so much the weeds that bother me but that blasted quackgrass!! Some of you might recall DH tilled this large area a few years ago without killing off the turf first -- dude tilled in quackgrass AAARRRGH!!!

I feel your pain. I have a little quackgrass that I'm trying to get rid of and I just can't. It hides in the lawn and sneaks back into the bed every second I let my guard down. Plus you know what happens to every bit that's missed.

I don't even know what to do about a whole garden full of it. It would be war. Establish perimeter, shock and awe, see which areas you can stabilize. Good luck.

Katob, there may be some reduction by adding a gravel path or two. But more lawn, no. Will leave that too the next owners if anyone in their right mind buys the place! This is always the first thing new visitors to our place say: “How do you manage all this work?”.

Besides, our lawn is a vole city,

I am using smaller shrubs as I have larger shrubs and grasses in the rear of the bed . Keeping roses, veronicastrums, baptisias, asters, phlox, peonies, solidago Fireworks, sedum, campanula lactiflora, dictamnus, astrantia, amsonia, eryngium, thalictrum lilies. Tossing out plants that need dividing so often or seed themselves unwelcomingly in my garden (iris siberica, crocosmia, tradescantia). Also digging out smaller plants that I like ( Solidaster “Lemore”) but are wimpy alone and clustering them for bigger impact.

To carry on with main topic: Seed starting, mostly vegies. Planted fava beans and peas already. Digging out old strawberry bed. Remineralizing my vegies beds after a soil test revealed deficiencies which I believe have contributed to decreasing productivity. Cleaning out our barn which is my husband’s domain but even he does not see the value of his 50 year old used lumber collection (well not all of it anyway)...I keep close by in case he vacillates.

So in a nutshell, we are keeping very busy in tasks we enjoy, mostly outside, for the most part staying quarantined as asked by our wise governor. The solemn news at night is a reality check on the pain and suffering happening to others here and around the world and sadness and worry creep back in. Hoping you and yours weather this storm and get some solace in your gardens as well.

That sounds like an excellent list of perennials, and I'm also giving the stink eye to the siberian iris. They're trouble free, but here the bloom season is short, and the old foliage is so tough and a pain to trim in the spring that it irritates me every time I do it. They are so beautiful though...

Be careful with throwing out that lumber collection. I feel like everytime I get the bug to throw things out I end up needing just the piece I knew I had...

Things to be fixed is a different story though. If I haven't fixed it and it's been sitting there for five years, out it goes. I've never regretted that.

I just transplanted lettuce seedlings. If the world crumbles, at least I can have a salad.