How does your garden grow?

We just finished a marathon, tweleve hour day, at Winifred. I am sunburnt and super tired so instead of giving you a summary of the entire day (I will summarize the weekend tomorrow) I want to tell you about my garden! Once the inside of the house is done I can guarantee that I will be spending a majority of ny time outside in our magnificent yard.
I worked really hard on the garden today. I worked outside so long that I now have my first sunburn of the season. Tyler and Dylan did a lot of raking and leaf disposing early in the morning while I worked on degreasing the top cabinets and fan blades in the kitchen while my mom and Tammie finished painting the kitchen for me (which is done except for the trim, and which now looks amazing!). I wanted to get out and enjoy the weather and get away from the tops of those cabinets, so I went oustide and started raking all the leaves. I thought it would be an easy task. I was wrong.
The problem I ran into is that there is woodchips every where and rock paths which made sweeping and raking the leaves difficult. Did I mention that our yard is really, really large? I was outside raking for the entire afternoon into the early evening. I did take a few breaks. I worked on collecting all the solar lights to see which ones work and which ones don't- we have so many! I am excited to rearrange them throughout the yard Dylan and I also got rid of the head and foot boards that were being used as garden ornamentation. They just weren't my style. They were very difficult to get out of the ground! I think me and Dylan both have blisters now.

The bed frames all moved out of the garden.

Despite the blister, sunburn and aching back, it was really fun to find a garden under all the leaves and debris! It was really rewarding to start to see progress. We uncovered a ton of perennials and shoots that are starting to come up! Every time I start raking I found more signs of life! It was so much fun- like a scavenger hunt. I can't wait until the bloom.

One of my discoveries underneath the leaves!

By the end of the day we bagged the rest of the piles of leaves and 12 50-gallon yard bags later, we are still not done! It is supposed to rain tomorrow so at least we got the majority of leaves and dead brush cleaned up! Hopefully the rain will bring some shoots from a few more bulbs! Next sunny day I will take pictures of the garden and the soon-to-be flowers!

You can see more yard pictures in my Picasa Web Album