This morning my helper and I stopped on the way back from town to pick up more of the wood shavings by the side of the road, left over from wood-cutting operations. I don't know how cost-effective this is, since I'm paying my helper to assist me in gathering it, but re-use has a value of its own. We filled one large black garbage bag, normally used for our paper recycling, and twenty twenty-liter bags that had previously held compost bought from the store. I now have a lifetime supply of these last, but they're great for trash and recycling. This was as much wood shavings as we could fit in the Panda, and we had to tie down the rear hatch.

The weather is fair and warm for the season, but the wind is picking up today, forecast to bring a drop in temperatures, which is fine with me. It's still March, not yet time for balmy airs. We could use rain to water the garden, but there's none in the forecast. Ground water supplies are good.

The roses are leafing out marvelously now, buds forming on the Teas. The wisteria is also forming buds; the forsythia is a blaze of yellow. Sweet violets are fading, while the Viola sororia in the alley, scentless but otherwise lovely, is in bloom. This one is the form V.sororia priceana; I want the white form, but have to find someplace dire enough to contain its exuberance. The alley is perfect but taken.

Yesterday I set my helper to cleaning out the shade garden. There are pretty things going on there, but I can't appreciate them while it's such a mess. I pulled nettles for a couple of hours until I got tired. It looked better afterwards, though my helper does have a tendency to make tabula rasa which I'm trying to discourage. He sure got the nettles and lemon balm out, though. The Paeonia 'mollis' was largely spared after I showed it, though I'm not sure some two-leaved babies weren't wiped out....I had told him not to work there. It seeds very nicely in its miserable spot, and makes a show for a few days every spring. Today my helper is pulling dead grass in the roses and shrubs, weeding nettles he didn't already get yesterday, and making the shade garden, not only prettier, but more approachable for me, so I can look over the roses and do a bit of pruning. I sure am looking forward to getting the motor scythe back: that should take care of the rest of the tidying.

So, that's it for today. We're in between waves of flowers, at least, in my garden, but the vivid new foliage, the glossy grass starred with English daisies, is lovely enough. It'll do.