I’ve cleaned up a good chunk of the yard, and moved the perennial pots out of the garage, and into their proper homes in either the side or back gardens. (I did lose track of the English daisies, so they’re in one of the pots in the back yard for the moment. Assuming they come back and sprout, once I figure out what they are, they’ll be moving to the side garden as well.) I even did a little transplanting, as a crocus has managed to get itself set right in the middle of the rose bush of doom, and I figured it would be kind of me to get it out of there.
I do still have a little work to do. There’s a pile of very stick-filled detritus in the back yard that I need to figure out what to do with. I’m leaning towards getting it into some kind of containment and dumping it in the brush in my father’s backyard, but now that he got rid of his truck, that’ll be a little harder to make happen, so we’ll see. I also need to do something about the rose bush of doom. I haven’t pruned that back since the beginning of the season last year, so it needs some tending. I’ve pretty much decided that I don’t mind if it never blooms while I live in this house, if that means it’ll stay relatively contained.
My wild card for this year is the bed in the back yard. Since my landlord hacked the lilac to near death status (it has a few sprouts, but not many. I’m hoping that’ll improve shortly), the bed may get more sun for the next several years. At the moment, about the only things that do well there are bulbs and lily of the valley, because they’re there before the trees come in and shade out the yard, and the Solomon’s seal, because it’s pretty darn shade tolerant. There will still be all the other trees that shade the yard, but I’ll be interested to see if the lack of lilac shade makes any difference. I’m not planning on planting anything unless it quickly becomes clear that there’s been a sea-change in the amount of sun that bed gets.