intertext | Sunday in the garden with dogs

My neighbour at the bottom was powerwashing his driveway and the sidewalk today. If you think I'm the kind of person who powerwashes things, you are altogether mistook about me. I don't like gas mowers, either, and consider leaf-blowers tools of the devil. Never mind. I spent a pleasant afternoon weeding my perennial bed and replanting delphiniums, which in our climate we pretty much have to treat as annuals. Every year I hope they'll come back, and they rarely do. I think it's too damp for them, despite the fact that we have a variety known as "Pacific Giant" theoretically bred here. If you plant them on the top of a dry slope in full sun, you might be lucky, but then we might get one of our rare freezes and it'll be done in anyway...

Things in bloom today: primroses (that is primula vulgaris, the pale yellow English primrose), primula wanda, anemone blanda, chionodoxa, squill, daffodils, hyacinth, and the very first forget-me-nots.

Birds in the garden: touwhee, black-eyed junco, bush-tits, starlings, chickadee, pigeons, house finch, a fox sparrow and of course many house sparrows.