Category: Spring in Minnesota

Figuring Stuff Out


Any perennial gardener will tell you that we are an interesting bunch this time of year.  We are raring to go, but the weather teaches us patience.  I am soooo there these past few months.  And compounding that is a not so little journey I have been on to get ready to retire. 

So this story goes back a few years.  I have known I needed a plan to successfully retire for quite a few years.  I have watched various female family members “fail” at retirement, and return to work.  I didn’t want to have that scenario, so I started to consider options.  I started to look at my bucket list.  We had done the camper on land up north.  But to do a garden up north we needed a well. That was tbd.  Our getaway, but potentially a retirement location to build out.  If I could handle not being in a neighborhood. We had also renovated a little house in a mining town off Lake Superior.  I could have turned the whole back yard into a garden and spent winters on lots of seed projects. It also had a neighborhood. All of that would have been a success from my viewpoint but my husband was very unhappy.  Not with the location, but with the house.  After we sold that house, I needed to do more definition of the items on my bucket list.  I kind of stalled out there.  More like gave up for a while.  But eventually I got back into gear and came up with next steps.

I had started to volunteer garden for a local historic cemetery. I knew I could stay very content from the beginning of May to the end of October, gardening between the townhouse and the historic cemetery.  I had bumped up against my energy limit last fall while planting all those new daylilies and divisions, but I knew that was a big season finale.  With everything planted and the historic cemetery garden switched over from rock to mulch, I knew 2025 and forward were right-sized – enough challenge but not too much either.  Where the problem came in was November through April.  I simply didn’t have room for big seed projects, and I needed something to do in our long cold winters, preferably with a neighborhood or some type of consistent socialization.

Now admittedly, I am not a spring chicken with unlimited energy, and I also have some health stuff.  But our house is pretty clutter free, so it stays pretty easy to clean, and the garage only takes a day in spring and a day in fall to get into maintenance shape.  There is just not enough to keep me busy November – April in retirement.  But I came up with a plan for that too.  I would work toward going back to contracting, and look for 6 month contracts November through April, when I was ready, and see how that went.  

Simultaneously, as part of my volunteering, I had a plan to do posts for our local historical society to keep me busy this past winter and to bring more proactive attention to the historic cemetery.  Between contracting and writing, I knew I could keep a good level of challenge.  And, of course, normal life has normal family and friend activities.  All was in hand.  

What I did not expect was the level of historical research I got interested in.  I wrote a few high level, season appropriate posts and then I started on a deep dive.  And that, my friends, was how the Mahala project was born.  That project has kept me very busy, through the deep of winter, past a layoff I suspected was coming but may have shortened my runway to retirement, and now almost a month into spring.  The research is now done, and I need to start writing. And I need to get what I hope are the “Mahala” seeds to go to seedling and, hopefully bloom.  But before I plant those 28 seeds there is a second baby shower to attend for our third grandson, and then Easter.  And it would help if I could get the shamrocks outside so I can have that indoor space for seed planting, but it needs to be consistently 40 degrees Fahrenheit at night before that can happen.  Oh, bother 😘

I am applying for jobs that really look super interesting, as they come up, but my guess is this is either retirement time, or a winter contract will pop up in due time.  We shall see.  There is a lot that is out of my hands.

Yesterday was cool. All that got done, garden-wise, was a walk over at the historic cemetery. My husband showed me some new things in the woods – a buck rub,

and I noticed a bird has a very nice nest in a tree along the edge of the adjacent corn field.

I also noticed the old garden has turned into a food plot for the deer lol


More to come. 

My trusty side kick is here to spur me on.  I guess when you are a centenarian in dog years you can nap on a pillow, on blankets, on a recliner 😂

The Sedum

Many years, probably decades ago, we received a few Autumn Joy sedum from my Dad. He overbought and we were the lucky recipients. Those Autumn Joy sedum far outperform all our other sedum, and for almost two decades I have rooted collateral damage, divided them, and used them to fill in for plants that died out. When our Irish Terrier used to attack the bees on them, in the potting soil the broken stems would go to be rooted. When bunnies and squirrels get a little crazy, in the potting soil the broken stems go to be rooted. When I make a weeding or trimming error, in the potting soil the affected stems go to be rooted.

However, when I cut the sedum back in the fall, as much as I try to keep the stems close to the rootball, in the spring it always looks like the picture below. And I, in cleanup mode in the spring, have learned to leave those alone. Because if I don’t, I will have an early spring need to reroot stems, usually when all my dirt is still neatly in bags in the garage.

Not to worry. Soon the new growth will cover them. And in the fall the old stems will be easily removed, when I cut the sedum back again, and create next spring’s cut stems … that I will leave alone 😊

Slight pause

First I paused garden work to have a weekend with our oldest grandson. And then this happened.

It built up from there, but thankfully the heavy rains from the day before were not snow. It all melted the next day.

Yesterday we got another snow storm, but today that too has pretty much melted, at least on the street, driveways, and sidewalks. Such is early spring. Go, stop, go, stop. Soon snow will disappear from the forecast, and it will be consistently warm enough to not question if garden season really is here. The tulip bulbs that are popping up greens are sending a hopeful message.

A good week

Spring garden cleanup is done.
At the historic cemetery, everything that needed cutting back and cleaning up is done. There were a lot of oak leaves on the ground cover, and it needed serious trimming, but it is looking very healthy with all of that done.

Instead of bringing the forced daffodils up north, I planted them at the cemetery where it looks like moles are trying to make inroads.


At the townhouse, the linden had shed a lot over the winter. The sticks from the linden that were in the grass are now either to compost or in the rock for the birds to find for nesting.

The rocks that moved out of the trim are back in, the winter lanterns are back in storage, the spring and summer garden decorations are back out,

the bird bath has been filled for the first time,

the forget-me-not foliage has been pulled (and trashed, not composted, so any leftover seeds can’t germinate in unwanted areas),

and I have started to put coffee grounds on the perimeter of the plants (in the rock, to slowly settle in).

This is always such a fun time of year – getting back in the gardens, cleaning them up, getting ready for the season ahead.

Next up is mulch at the cemetery garden. Just a topper.

Happy Spring 2024!

Happy Spring 2024! Gardening season has begun in earnest here. A few weeks ago my forced daffodils started blooming. They are now wrapping up, and tonight will be their first night outdoors. Their greens need to fade back before I can cut them back and plant them in the ground. Location TBD.
Here are the last of the blooms.

The sedum I left out for the birds and bunnies are all cut back, the daylilies, sedum, tulip, and crocus are all coming up, and the Bluebells clematis has buds. Coffee grounds (to prevent slugs) are already on half of the garden areas. It might not be official spring, but spring has sprung in Minnesota. No question about it. And the mosquitoes got the memo too. 10 minutes of sitting out by the little gas fire pit, and the first one made an appearance. Where is that bin of repellents? Better take stock now.

Early morning

May is here, and with it, hopefully, more patio time at the townhouse, and camping time up north.

The snow up north has returned to it’s liquid form, allowing tulips to start showing up.

Now, admittedly, those, like the tulips I recently planted at the historic cemetery, were forced bulbs from years past, and have never bloomed up north, that I know of. But just having the greens is an improvement from waist-high snow. It was a very long winter.

The past couple mornings, at the townhouse, I had an “opportunity” to go outside at 4am, courtesy of one terhuahua named Sandy. The moon was full and … the birds were singing. At 4:09 am.

12 to go

I have been busy putting coffee grounds around all the daylilies and hostas that are coming up. Wow! Reality check that the workout we now do at the Y really is pretty much aerobic. Gardening muscles are a very different workout.

There are 12 plants to go, that haven’t popped up yet, that still need coffee grounds. They are mostly hostas and the Asian lily clumps. I am not optimistic about the Asian lilies by the linden, along the left side of the little path, as they have been fading the past two years. I will miss them if they fail. They are the ones on my blog front picture. But if they fail, why a nice replacement in the form of a pollinator created daylily seedling could fill that space, in a pinch, if needed 😊