Spring! At Last!

     Finally there are tiny green leaves appearing on the ends of the tree twigs. I am so glad to see them. It feels like I have waited years instead of a winter for this spring to come. All my trees look like they are just ready to burst into bloom. One Bradford pear is blooming. The other one never seems to bloom any more. Just lots of leaves. Wish I could figure out what the problem with that tree is.
     I planted tomato seeds, cucumber seeds, watermellon and squarsh seeds in peat pots yesterday. They will sit in the sunroom until large enough to put into my little garden. And it will be little this year. Any rogue veggies that come up due to the fact that I let a lot of tomatoes rote in the garden when it froze last fall will be pulled for weeds instead of trying to raise so many plants like I did last year.
     I plants, trees, flowers and anything green has to be watered almost daily here in our desert. I am not able to keep up all the work like I used to so the garden has been cut to just a few veggies.
     I will be planting moring glories, marigolds, cosmas, 4-O-clocks and gladiolias flowers soon. I have a lily and some Dutch Iris fixing to bloom on the sunroom and a bleeding heart plant.
    The worst thing about spring is all the tumbleweeds that are starting to come up. But even they look nice at first since they are green.

Kinks in My Life

I could make a very long list of the kinks I have in my life that make life harder. First and foremost is the urge to have a garden in the desert. I have done it for years and years - more than I want to count. Each spring I get this compulsive urge to plant seeds; flower seeds, vegetable seeds, and any other seed I might find. Then all summer I kick myself for having done so as I have to water, and care for first the seedlings, and then the plants. And then you have to figure out what to do with all the veggies that you have grown. That is after you and all your neighbors and friends have been veggied out on fresh squash, tomatoes and watermelon.

for example - take this mornings kinks

I got up and decided to plant the last of my seeds. While doing so I realized it was already very warm outside. So I turned on the water and proceeded to water all the little spots that I had planted the last of the seeds in, and all the little seedlings - in pots and in the ground - that are just poking their heads up as that is the time they need the most frequent watering. This wouldn't have been so bad if it hadn't been that every time I pulled on the hose it kinked. I would put down the end where the water was supposed to be coming out of - and wasn't - and walk across the yard to the kink, unkink it and stretch out the hose so that hopefully it wouldn't kink again. WRONG Within a few minutes of pulling the hose around it would kink again. Again this wouldn't have been to bad if I hadn't had extra "help" from Tuffee, my Border Collie, who has a major goal in life of 'catching' the water as it comes out of the hose - and in the process running and stomping through the seedlings.
At last I gave up on watering for the time being and retreated to the horse pens to hook up the ATV to the railroad tie drag and drive round and round the pens smashing and dragging sand and manure to hopefully desrup the breeding cycle of the gnats that have been torturing the horses the past few days. At least doing this I was sitting down on the ATV and not bent over at the waist - with my head down - planting seeds and fighting with a contrary water hose.