Spring Clean-Up is a Breeze!

A beautiful day today and a walk around the yard revealed that some of my tulips are peeking up from the ground a couple of inches. I have an unwritten rule that Spring cleanup has to be done before the tulips arrive. They wait all year to bloom and deserve to show their splendor in a tidy garden. So my honey and I escaped from the world to spend some time in the garden. "One hour" he said. I smiled. He doesn't share the same passion that I do for gardening, but is a good sport about it and does all the hard stuff for me. Two and a half hours later we declared we were done for the day. We did a great job last Fall with cleanup so there wasn't a lot of debris. We did some weed control, raked the leaves from under the red twig dogwoods and cut back the stems from the fall perennials on the south side of the house. Need to cut back those red twigs soon. I like to wait to prune until the hard frost is over but before new growth begins. Today would have been a good day, but I knew I was pushing the limits with my willing helper, so we called it quits. We have another couple of hours of work to do on the north side for the cleanup to be done. Oh and the red twig pruning, there are about 16 of them on our property. Hm-m-m... this may take a bit longer. Better let our old bones rest a day or so before we're at it again. Can't say enough about the benefits of a good Fall cleanup, it makes Spring cleanup a breeze!