Gardening Officially Commences.

The flowers of my labors.

This morning we took Bruiser to the dog park after dropping my daughter off at her highly rewarding employment at Subway. Driving in the car makes him anxious--he has a repertoire of whines and barks that either begin or end in yawns that are incredibly musical and so dang funny--but when we approach the dog park, he turns frantic. He acts like, having come to the dog park, we might not actually get out. Once he gets inside the fence, he runs without pause, the exception being for salutations to other dogs in the form of sniffing. It's a great way to begin the day. We generally end up chatting with other dog people about their splendid dogs. This morning, we met a lovely Siberian husky named Tank and a gigantic Great Dane, a black one, named Moose. Moose is female, a little disconnect for me, I don't know why.Similarly, after coming home from the dog park, I felt moved by the spirit (of gardening) to go to our local greenhouse where you can get flats and flats of all kinds of plants. I say similarly, because I always end up in little gardener chats with the folks at the greenhouse. I give friendly advice--"Brandywines are the best tomatoes!" "Just get that newspaper wet and you can wrap the roots in them"--as if I were the local gardening expert or something. So I planted tons of flowers in pots, which I'm interspersing in the actual flower beds in the front yard--this, because Bruiser, as debonair as he appears to be, is a bit of a digger, and I do love my flower pots. I planted stocks, cosmos, single-petaled marigolds, red and white zinnias in with lots of herbs--parsley, basil, a couple of kinds of mint, lemon verbena, rosemary. It's lovely. We'll be shoveling compost (homemade--from our very own garbage!) into the grow boxes for the tomatoes. Probably tomorrow, on the Sabbath of our Lord, before I go off to church.