Winter Blues=Spring Garden Planning

With temps this cold for this long, my thoughts inevitably turn to warmer weather.  I'm aching and tired and sore from shoveling snow nearly daily.  Temperatures have dipped below zero more times than I care to think about.  I realized that in the summer, we had days where temperatures rose to over a hundred degrees and now we have had temperatures well below zero--that's a swing of at least 110 degrees' difference!  Crazy!

Around here, it's almost time to start seeds indoors here to prepare for the spring and summer gardens.  However, this year, I think I'll do something different with my garden beds.

I think I've been planting veggies out there for the past four summers now.  I want to give my garden a rest and plant two beds full of cutting flowers to have around the house this summer--I've never done this, so I think it would be a great change of pace.

I'm also planning to transplant some perennials that grow on the north side of our house.  The bed gets constantly overgrown with weeds every summer because it's a narrow space that is close to the house next door and never really gets sunlight, so it remains damp and shady all the time--perfect conditions for growing weeds, we've found!  I'd like to take the lilies and move them to the front yard, along with the large sedum.  A friend of ours gave us tiger lily transplants a few summers ago, which have done fairly well in the weed patch, but will probably be moved to the backyard.  Once that's clear, we'll just spray the bed with weed killer and not have to tend to it anymore.  Plus, we'll have some nice plants in our front yard, so win-win!