being not doing

Our new-to-us car outside our house.
We bought a car this week. The car is the first one I’ve ever owned so we’re conceptualizing it as my starter car, which will hopefully make my partner’s shift from a red Mustang convertible to a gray Saturn Ion moderately less ignominious. Like I said, we’re hoping. […]

Sedum by the south fence.
I was happy to see that the sedum wasn’t at all hurt by being moved a foot to the west last year. I discovered it popping up under the rose bush along the far part of the south fence when I was clearing that area of vines. When I […]

Bloomin’ quince.
With the official coming of spring, plants are bursting into bloom all over the yard. The flowering quince has been in full bloom all week, joined yesterday by the forsythia and the opening of the daffodils. The flowers were a nice reward for the work I’d put into clearing the beds, and […]

Shoots in the front bed. From top to bottom: early-blooming yellow daylilies, garlic chives, and late-blooming orange daylilies.
Assessing the yard this spring, I’m relatively pleased with what I have to work with. A thick leaf mulch still covers the beds, although I’ve raked the leaves away from the plants I’m trying to encourage: […]

Road salt heading to the Chesapeake Bay.
One of the things I hate the most about living out here is the way they deal with winter weather. Or rather, the ways in which they don’t deal with it. During the first year we were here, there was a blizzard. A good old-fashioned three-feet-of-snow-shuts-the-city-down-for-a-week […]

This week I splurged and took the Zipcar to the shore to see the wintering waterfowl before they head back to my homeland for the summer (don’t get me started on the Flexcar buyout and how the new carlords are Teh Suck). This year I’ve decided to take the Go Where The Birds Are […]