I’ve been mulching, mulching and mulching some more. I’m doing a lot of things in the garden that I would normally do a few weeks from now. Since I’m leaving for San Diego on Wednesday, I don’t have that luxury. The beds have been cleaned out, the mulch is spread, the plants are emerging, the hose has been hooked up, the glider has pillows ~ tomorrow I will buy some hanging plants and plant some pots for the porch. I’m holding off until then because we have another cold night tonight. After that, the rest of the week looks warmer. Oh, I will miss working in my garden this spring. This is my favorite time of year, and I love nothing more than walking through the garden checking on my plants, watering, weeding ~ everything. I’m embarrassed to say it, but I get teary at the thought of being away from all this.

Thought I’d share something we did to make the porch safer for the dogs. The open arch leading onto the porch is lovely, but we knew it needed a gate or some way to close it off so that the dogs could spend time on the porch. Neither of us was up to building a gate or even knew how to. We bought a small section of picket fence from Lowe’s that was in the clearance section.

We tried propping it against the posts, but then I bought these and attached them to the posts.

Now we just slip the “gate” right into these and all is secure. Plus, the picket fence suits the look of our porch, don’t you think?

More later.