New video: Green Man’s Grotto, February 2024. A tour of our backyard garden at its worst, with a few ideas for the upcoming growing season.

Woodland crocus is always the first flower in our yard—and this year it’s even earlier. According to Seek, I first recorded it on Feb 22 last year. They’re just gorgeous little things.

We (mostly Rachel!) made a decent dent in this weekend’s project. It’ll take at least one more round to dig out the … oh I don’t know … ten remaining tons of rock and landscape fabric.

How it looked last summer versus current state:

So one of our projects is to rip out (almost) all of the landscaping on the south side of the house and replace it with flowers and food. I was planning to start helping Rachel this afternoon (I was job working this morning) but then came out and she already had a great deal of it done! She said “buy a girl a pair of coveralls and there’s no telling what she’ll do.” ❤️ But don’t worry, there’s still plenty of work left for me to share in. 😄

Gardening is afoot! Rachel is planting sweet peas and prepping some other indoor containers for seed starting.

Snow day at the Abel house! Green Man’s Grotto is chilly.

Our little pond is mostly frozen now, except where a little water flows. I wonder if Nessie is still there.

The second trimming of the tree. For the next few days the tree will be another food source for the birds as the remaining needles drop as mulch for Green Man’s Grotto.

Folks, Rachel found the bullfrog that lives in our pond eating a bird as big as the frog itself. I’ll spare you the picture. I had no idea they’d eat anything that big. We have now named her Nessie.