Strawberries-in-waiting

Spring is finally, officially, and indisputably upon us. You know what that means, don't you? When nothing much of interest is going on in my life, I'll at least have garden pictures to post.

For those of you not in New England, we've had a lot of rain this month. I haven't watered at all, and everything's doing just fine. In the backyard we have peas, lettuce, and spinach that are sufficiently hydrated and will likely grow like gangbusters once the sun comes out, and I planted beets and string beans this afternoon. In the course of turning the soil in the raised beds for approximately 20 minutes, I found eight grubs. Wish me luck on getting a good night's sleep, nightmare-free, ok?

The front of the house, where we tried to grow most of our wedding flowers last year, is the site of decidedly less high-stakes gardening this year. We had a pretty poor showing of tulips and daffodils in April, so we took some time today and improved the soil with several shovelfuls of black gold from our compost bin. Moving black gold, I should say: the stuff was positively writhing with earthworms. If I didn't remind myself repeatedly how good they are for the soil, that image certainly would have been another candidate for nightmare fodder.

Anyway, the front garden is home to asparagus, azaleas, anemones, sedum, irises, and strawberries. The strawberries in particular are having a banner year so far. If half the flowers turn into berries, we should be set for several breakfasts' worth. I snapped some photos, none of which really capture the extent to which the strawberry plants are thriving, but on a whim I decided to try out some photo effects via Picasa's Piknik program. I left one photo unchanged for the sake of comparison (three guesses which one). I thought I was doing pretty well with my little point-and-shoot, but man, do the original images look disappointing next to their doctored counterparts!






Happy spring, everyone!