Today is damp and misty. It is supposed to rain later this afternoon and tomorrow. My landscaper is weeding my garden right now and getting it ready for plants. I’ll be buying them on Wednesday and also the herbs and flowers for my deck planters. Today I have a long list of places I need to go but they’re all within a mile of each other so I don’t have any complaints.

I filled all the bird feeders and the bird baths yesterday. I also put out a new oriole feeder for grape jelly, but I don’t know if the orioles are around yet. I have another new feeder yet to be hung with two bowls so the orioles will get their jelly and some orange nectar. I have a new hummingbird feeder which is also a suncatcher. That will go out a bit later. I’m running out of branches and using poles won’t help as the deck is too high to see them. Maybe there are some I can attach to the deck. I’ll have to do some hunting.

My father planted pansies, geraniums or marigolds in the front garden of my childhood home. That was the only spot for flowers. The sides and middle of the garden also had a few bushes which came with the house. Two fir trees were on the side lawn. The backyard was for the clothes line. His lawn was always beautiful. I think the fathers of the neighborhood gauged their manliness by the quality of their lawns. Some of the yards had lawns filled with weeds and brown spots of dirt, and the fathers who lived there were the objects of disdain.

When I was older and my parents had bought their own house, my father gave guided tours of his lawn. I always armed myself with appropriate adjectives when I was taken on the tour. Every year he’d asked, “Isn’t this the best lawn?” Every year I’d answer yes.