Spring seems to have finally arrived in South Carolina. I think we have seen the last freezing night, at least I hope so. I am going to go ahead and believe that and I am going to fertilize my grass. I am ready for it to turn green and need to be cut.

 It is supposed to be in the 70's most of the week, so hopefully I will see some progress on my bamboo. Today I am going to spread some cow manure on the areas I think they are going to shoot. After that waters in for a few days, I will go ahead and refresh the mulch on top of it.

 I started cleaning out beds in the front yard this week and have one all done. Today I am going to see if I can find some sort of border grass to put along my brick walkway in the front. That walkway and the patio by the front door has always been an eye sore in my yard. I am hopeful that the border grass will grow quickly and mask the problem. I really don't want to spend the money reworking those bricks. I really don't like laying brck patios. No fun.

It took a while, but eight bags of rocks later it looks a lot better.

Another cold and rainy day in South Carolina. I was traveling earlier in the week, and was really hoping to come home to some nice weather. It is about 46 and raining. Not a good day to get motivated about the yard. One week left of February, so hopefully March will be better. I had high hopes for a warm February, but so far we have only had a couple of nice days.

My tulips have made a start and I noticed today that my weeping willow tree is now budding.

 A few more weeks should make a difference.

Thanks for listening.

I am traveling this week, and will not be able to do anything around the yard until this weekend. I am anxious to get back home and see how my tulips are doing and if I have any new Bamboo shoots. I guess it is still a little early to expect much, but the few nice days we had this past weekend really got me looking forward to some sustained warmth and sunshine.

I am sure you have seen the little mini greenhouses for sale at Lowes. The ones with the little peat pellets and the plastic dome? Well, I got three of them a couple of weeks back and planted a couple of different flower seeds in them. They germinated in about three days, and now I have about 100 little sprouts. Once they got about 2" long with a couple of very small leaves on each stem they basically stopped growing. The directions did say that once they got leaves on them, that I should cut off all but one plant per peat pellet. I guess I should do that, but they were growing so well. If they haven't progressed by the time I get home this weekend, I will cut them back and see if that helps any. I will post up some pictures later.

 I was able to get some rocks down in the pool equipment area over the weekend. I only got four bags (they were really heavy, and I wasn't highly motivated), but that covered about a fourth of the ground back there and it does look much better.

Thanks for listening.

This week has been in the 60's for the most part and we got some pretty decent rain last night and this morning. My tulips are still progressing, and I am watching my bamboo closely.

The area where I am trying to grow my bamboo is in a mulch bed that has landscape fabric under the mulch. These bamboo shoots are very strong, but I still have to let them loose when they start to shoot. I check the area around the main culms and look for any bumps. They will push the fabric up, but they can't break through, so I have to cut them loose. I have high hopes for my bamboo this year. They say that the first year it sleeps, the second year it creeps and the third year it leaps. Since I planted the in early October I hope that 2007 counts as the first year, and that I can just skip the creeping year by taking really good care of them. I am going to replenish the mulch in all my beds in about two weeks, and before I do that, I am going to put down cow manure on top of the bamboo area. Let it sit for a day or two and then put the mulch on top. They have good sprinkler coverage, full sun and the addition of fertilizer should give them a good head start.

As soon as they start to shoot I will start a forum thread to track their progress.

I made a little progress on my pool equipment area yesterday. I got all the debri taken care of and got it raked out. I need to decide what ground cover material I want to use. I am still pretty convinced that small pebbles are the answer. Maybe this weekend I can button that one up.

Thanks for listening.

Well, it is already Tuesday and I haven't really done much around the yard this week. I have a fenced area around my pool equipment that was designed to hide the pump, filters, pool tools, and hoses. It is serving it's purpose, but I have really neglected it since no one can see it except me. When I built the fence I cut the tops of the boards to give it a scalloped look. It looks nice, but at the time I was busy so I didn't go back and clean up behind myself. So one goal this week is to pick up all the construction debri, pull the weeds, and put some material on the ground to prevent the dirt from eroding away and to help prevent weeds from growing in there. I am thinking about using some sort of rocks, maybe some pebbles. I don't really feel like hauling 500 pounds of rocks back there, but I think rocks will be the best thing to use.

Here's how it looks today, hopefully it will look better by tomorrow.

I don't know about the rest of you, but Spring can not get here soon enough. I live in central South Carolina in a small suburb of Columbia called Blythewood. While we enjoy very moderate winters here, it is still too cold to really get any work done in the yard between late November and late February.

Well, we're getting close, but not close enough for me.