May gardens bloom

In the last post I mentioned we'd been exhausting ourselves with endless shopping and I'm happy to report that that phase is over. The pantry is fully stocked, we have all of the toilet paper and coat hangers a house needs to run efficiently, and at least one room has a lamp. That will do for now.
It's time to take a break from purchasing things and get to the good stuff—gardening!
Thanks to Mihai's long-distance efforts at retaining a gardener, our yard is in good shape. It's been well-maintained and we've got a variety of trees growing, including some young fruit trees that in a few years will hopefully give us lovely pears, apples, and cherries. But it's a large lot and even with all of the trees, there are still swaths of yard devoid of color and texture. What we need are flowers and vegetables and in anticipation of this need, I stocked my suitcase with 28 packets of seeds. (In retrospect I might have done well to exchange a portion of seed space for my gardening shoes but alas, I did not have such foresight and my regular tennis shoes have played the role of sacrificial lamb.)
Early in the week we woke to true spring weather—bright, sunny, and warm—exactly the sort of morning that makes one excited to pull out the gardening tools and get to work, which was fortuitous because we had to remove nearly 100 cubic feet of white rock that filled the three planting beds. (While it's a useful material for keeping the weeds down, white rock is visually unappealing and I was happy to see it all pile up in the woodshed to be used for a better purpose on another day.)
Once that was done, we turned over the soil and prepped it for planting. In spite of it being somewhat exhausting, monotonous work, we loved every minute of it. It's a glorious thing to be outside, sweating in the sun while listening to the music of the birds and the happy chatting of our neighbors.
Since we planted seeds, there currently isn't much to show for our efforts other than an exchange of white rock for brown dirt but hopefully within a few weeks we'll start seeing color in the otherwise barren landscape.

Other events from the week include a visit from Silviu who cut short his stay because we don't have a television which meant there wasn't enough to distract him from the angst of not being with his pets. So we took him back to Craiova and met up with Radu for a nice pizza and beer then headed back home the next morning.

I hope you all are enjoying the spring weather and spending time in your gardens, whatever their size or shape.
Be well!