I love tulips. These are courtesy my SIL who mailed the bulbs to us from Wisconsin as a housewarming present two years ago.

So I got a cool new garden tool at Lowe's last weekend, a lawn edger. Also got a hoe and a tiny little camping shovel for DD to dig with. But it's the lawn edger that I've been going a little nutty with.

On Sunday, we marked out where I want the third and final bed in the vegetable garden and I went all around the edges cutting through the grass, getting it prepped for skimming the turf off.

Then I decided while I've got the edger out, to re-cut the borders of the flower beds in front where the grass in encroaching. Which lead me to go ahead and expand the large rose bed, uniting it with the bed of tulips around one of the pie-cherry trees so that a)grass would stop growing into the bed and growing around the roses where I get damaged trying to pull it out and b) so DH doesn't have to mow under that tree anymore.

Which means I had a new shade garden to plant. So we, and by we I mean DD and I, put in three peonies and an Alba bleeding heart that we got at Lowe's in the same trip as the gardening tools.

But that still left a large swath of dirt without anything pretty in it. So this week I went to the nursery three blocks down and got some Jacob's Ladder plants, two more astilbes, and a small hosta. DD and I planted those last night, then I spread around the mulch I'd gotten at the garden center. And discovered the answer to the following garden equation:

Fine landscaping bark - gardening gloves = splinters.

The fine-as-hair, invisible splinters, no less. Ack. Luckily most of them rubbed off with some soap and water.

But now that everything's planted, watered, and mulched in the front yard I'm feeling pretty good about spring.

I look at the relatively small amount of gardening that this is and am floored that I was able to do it at all. Last year this would wiped me out for days. Two years ago I couldn't have been able to do this at all.

So I'm feeling some shock that I'm actually gaining back strenth and stamina, bit by bit. And have this pretty little flower bed to show for it. When I think about how crippled I felt two years ago, aching from head to toe and how I only feel mild aches and pains now, I'm flabbergasted. And the only main difference has been treatment for plantar fascitis and identifying and eliminating food intolerances.

Since I've begun eliminating dairy for the past week I've felt even better. (Tested last month and found out about the dairy. Kinda knew about the potato.)

I can actually envision physical activity now without the dread of days of recuperation. I was stiff last night after the digging and mulching, but it was managable and I feel almost normal this morning.

I almost have hope again.

Since this is going to be the last sunny warm day in a while I'm headed out to start the second coat of danish oil on the kitchenette set. I hope to have that puppy installed in my kitchen by May! Can't wait.

Will dose up on Arnica before I head out.

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