today, among other things

I started digging up pink turtlehead from the shady sideyard. Some into pots for a plant swap happening at my library on sunday.

Others moved to surround the newer stump. All the ones I moved there before are doing fine, even though some weren't dug in particularly well. I am expecting I won't be able to move all turtleheads from where the tree will come down in time, but if I loose some, there's in reserve those around the oldest stump by the garden, which I didn't finish digging out yet.

Also while I was over there, thinned out a ton of stinkin' hellebore seedlings. There were so many, so close together, I basically pulled out clumps leaving ones that have started to show first true leaves, to grow out. More than a dozen, easily. Also dug dandelions from the front yard, and then spent time sitting in the garden to pop off all the buds and flowerheads, twist off the root to discard, and keep the leaves for the compost. Also did some much-needed mowing, and trimmed edges around the garden beds, then mulched the leafy greens bed with grass clippings. Doesn't sound like much, but I'm tired! 

And I tried a new recipe. A baked dish of rice, eggs, cheese, onion, garlic and purple dead nettle. It used a heaping cup of fresh nettle leaves from the yard- and I'm eager to harvest them now the foliage looks great. So many when I pull or cut them, I just pluck off the largest, cleanest leaves and put the remainder in the compost bin. It still takes quite a lot of time to gather the nettles, pluck the leaves and rinse them. The recipe had too much pepper for my taste- I'm going to try it again with less pepper and a bit more cheese, before making it for the kids, see how they like it.

The pink salvias are sitting on my deck- I'm hoping when the maples come out, that sideyard will have enough sun at least on the top of the slope, for salvias and daylilies. And maybe asters (mine didn't sprout though). I didn't realize how intriguing these salvia flowers look- I think when I brought it home from the nursery yesterday they were still mostly buds.