Gardening Fever

I have started to receive the yearly spring gardening catalogs at home and online. With each catalog I am more ready for winter to end and the 7 months of digging in the dirt to begin. To be quite honest, I actually enjoy mowing the lawn and pulling weeds. Sherrie was complaining last night that I am watching too much TV. Well, when the weather is more accommodating and I can spend time in my yard, I don't watch any TV (well, very little). Today at lunch I went through one of the online catalogs that I received and picked out the flowers that I want to add to my garden collection. I have enough of the staples, that I am trying to find that special new flower that nobody else around me will have. I am making my list early so that when my favorite nursery opens this spring I can take my list and see if they will be stocking any of them. I once tried ordering plants out of catalogs. I received small, barely alive stock (some of it was actually dead) and I don't think anything that I planted survived. I found that buying my plants at the Tooele Valley Nursery has given me a 100% success rate and he tries to carry some of the specialty plants. I really like all the varieties of echinesia that are being developed. They have such beautiful blossoms, bloom so profusely and last for a long time (and they are drought tolerant). I noticed that my wisteria had started to leaf out before our last snow. The leafing was high on the vine so it should have made it through the winter okay. I always worry about the plants for the first couple of winters while they are getting hardened. But, as I stated in a previous blog, the winter thus far has been very good for the plants. The ferns on the side of the house didn't even die back all the way. I understand my Grandpa Gibby's love for his plants and flowers. I could see myself retiring and never leaving my house again (scary) because I need to care for my gardens. Sherrie has talked about putting a small playhouse in the backyard. If I do that I will have to take out my small vegetable garden. Although I wouldn't be that heart broken. I've grown quite a few tomatoes and squash, I just have harvested very many of them. It probably would work better to have the tomato plants in plants next to a cute playhouse. I wonder if she would let me keep the lawn mower and other gardening items in the playhouse... I doubt it. We keep driving past one that she likes. I told her I would build it for her. I don't think she trusts me because she says should would just like to buy the one she sees. I think it will be more expensive than she realizes. I will likely be building a playhouse with a porch swing this summer. It will look nice with the flower gardens around it.