What a wonderful and tiring day! Not gonna be able to move on Monday - it has been more than a year since I did heavy gardening work, and I spent about 8 hours out in the yard today. Assembled my new lawn mower and cut grass, picked up tree limbs and sticks, raked leaves that had accumulated in low spots, fertilized the lawn, dug out 2 boxwoods, breaking a shovel in the process. (Finally ran out to Lowes and bought one of those long, heavy, pry bars, as well as a new shovel and garden fork.) One of the boxwoods was planted in the sunniest little patch of the yard, at the end of the driveway. I double dug a small rectangular bed there and moved all my herbs from pots into that bed. After it was all done, I realized it is just the shape and size of a small grave!

Got the Kohmo Shekebu in the ground, as well as a mophead hydrangea and the Japanese anenome. Pruned the dwarf flowering almond, cut the bridal wreath spirea to the ground to rejunvenate it, and whacked off a forsythia which is growing where it doesn't get enough sun. Hope to dig it out. Also dug out some sweet autumn clematis because there is no good site for it.

I don't know how much digging my back is going to be able to stand tomorrow, but I hope to redo one of the existing beds - dig out the variegated liarope and all the oak seedlings, shift the edges of the bed a bit, and then redistribute the daylilies I heeled in there last August. The ginger lilys were heeled into that same bed, and have not yet emerged, and I think I lost the Harvest Moon and Sundowner echinacea I stuck in there. I don't have a good site for the ginger lilies prepared, and am not sure just what I am going to do with them. I tried digging a little in the front yard under the tree canapy. There are tree roots everywhere. I don't have the money right now to buy a dump truck of soil and the materials to make raised beds. I also don't want to invest a lot in hardscaping until I decide if I am going to stay here. But I'll figure something out.

Supposed to rain tomorrow night and Monday, so I hope to have strength tomorrow to get beds prepared for the rest of the plants in pots.

Damn, it feels good to be back out doing serious garden work!