Accidental Onions

The last few days have given us wonderful weather to play outside.  Thus the gardens got the much needed spring cleaning that they deserved.  For some reason, we collect the leaves from around the neighborhood.  The wind decides that we need a little ground decoration giving us leaves and snow as it wills.  I'm not all for this, but I say thanks and just bag up the leaves.  During that clean up we spotted the little buds of the hosta, Asiatic lilies and day-lilies coming up as well as a surprise in the back garden...or in a mound of dirt really.

Onions growing in a soil mound in the back yard.

Apparently, onions are trying to grow in a mound of dirt.  Thing is, the dirt isn't from the onion tote from last year's garden and I didn't put the onions there.  This is just extra dirt and somehow onions got there.  I'm blaming the squirrels because they're punks like that, but I'm going to go with it. I'm a fan of onions so it's cool.

Lemon mint with new growth, great for herbal teas :)

As for the other members of the garden from last year, the mint is growing back in their containers.  I wintered all but the Chocolate Mint on the back porch (the container was way to big to lug around the yard).  The porch has thick curtains over the storm windows to ward away the chilly breezes and I expected a normal Wisconsin winter; however, we barely got anything except for a handful of snowfalls.  So the snapdragons are still alive along the front border and if you've been paying attention to the blog then you know that it's almost impossible for me to kill them this year.  Instead, I trimmed back the old growth to make room for the new.

Also, we made a discovery on the side of the house with a pair of finches (irony at its best because we have a colony of zebra finches) nesting in a hole under the eaves.  There's a nice fluffy layer of attic installation on the side yard.  However, after the boy went into the attic and up a very scary looking ladder we got the problem of the finches fixed temporarily until we can get some material to close the gap in the wood and the holes in the attic vent.  Right now, we're using wood scraps from the back steps we replaced last fall and shims, lots and lots of shims.

Stay tuned for a special delivery later this week that I'm excited about!  Until then, get a little dirt under your fingernails and enjoy the humus.