When you’re retired you have the time to do the things you always wanted to do. Things like clean the yard. Yay cleaning. Everyone loves cleaning. I’ve been rehabilitating overgrown, under-loved flower beds for the last two days. In the front this meant cutting the butterfly bush back down to a reasonable size, pulling a ton of grass out, putting in a few annuals and heavily mulching everything else. In the back it has been removing the sticks from last year’s asters, cutting off or pulling out the runners the rough leaf dogwood sends out and raking out piles of dead leaves that just don’t seem to ever decompose. Gotta love those live oak leaves.
I got a few pictures of some yard critters. First is a bumble bee in my mountain laurel. When the wisteria bloomed last year I had a ton of these guys flying around all day. It’s good to see they’re back.
I also almost bumped into this lizard cleaning out the back flower bed. Either this lizard or one like it has been hanging around in the back yard for a long time. Probably longer than the house has been here actually. I see it every once in a while but this time it actually stayed still long enough to get a decent picture of it. In fact it just hung out on the fence the whole time I was raking leaves and cutting runners.
Two more beds to go and then it’ll be time to start worrying about the new garden.