Daffodils, English Ivy, and New Writing Projects

This morning I went to put out the recycling and when I was doing my garden check I saw a spot of yellow. It was this daffodil! You see, our neighbor has a garage that borders our yard, and that has English ivy growing all over it. The ivy is a pain, but I only trim it enough to keep it from invading my garden beds. I like to keep it otherwise because our birds shelter in it.

Well, large hunks of that ivy fell over in the February snow storm slumped over my one flower bed. I ignored it, thinking that it wasn’t doing any harm but today I did a little prune and rescue for the plants underneath. The daffodil stem was broken so I cut it and put it in a vase in my kitchen. I also found some pansies that survived (the ones in front of the house didn’t). I had a few Brussels sprouts seedlings in last fall and now one has survived to be about six inches tall. I also have some Red Russian kale about that size, too. It has been so wintery until just now that I forgot to plan any serious garden clean-up, but I will do that soon.

I wrote another article on the 2010 Maryland Home and Garden show. I got some nice attention from the last one I did, but it took me a long time to do all of the photos. Plus, I had a bit of a headache during the show and didn’t take great notes so I had to go back and carefully look at all of the signs and ribbons in my pictures.

I have a March “What’s blooming in Baltimore?” in the works and now that I have the daffodil I actually have enough photos for a slide show. I have some sort of clover themed article for St. Patrick ’s Day, but beyond that I’m looking forward to brainstorming a new set of fresh article topics. It is spring, and my fingers are worn out from typing “2010 Maryland Home and Garden Show” so much for the last series. I’m bad at clever titles and often make them too long, so that didn’t help.

This past week I’ve just been thrilled to be back outside, getting my own photos of flowers again. I like stock.xchng for what I don’t have because I can find photos that match my style, but I’d rather use my own stuff.