Gardening 101, the Karenpie Way

Last weekend something amazing happened -

Spring came! For ONE WHOLE DAY. Here, I have proof -

See that? The dark thing in the shape of a puffy, blobby human is called a "shadow". It's very rare in our part of the country because something extraordinary must occur - sunshine.

Fortunately for us, the sun was out all afternoon on Sunday and we definitely took advantage of it! I had some outdoor projects that needed my attention.

Things like transplanting my geraniums from the old, beat up terra cotta planters into darker, non-beat up, new ones and -

- getting garden boxes ready for seeds. Mother's Day weekend is the big weekend for planting in these here parts.

Before this important work can occur, you need tools. I like to gather everything together and dump it in one place before I start:

These are the tools we trained professionals use.

And let's not forget the wasp spray. The wasps were out in droves and - gasp! - dared begin building a nest in the basketball goal. Suckers. Don't they know who they're dealing with? Besides, Daniel has a deep-seated fear of bees and wasps so . . . Matthew to the rescue!

When I was pruning the fruit trees -or, as I like to call it, "randomly chopping a bunch of branches and limbs and hope to heaven you still get fruit come summer" - I was super thirsty and begged one of my nearby kids to grab something for me out of the fridge in the garage.

"What do you want, Mom?"

"Anything. I'll take whatever you bring me."

This is what they brought me -

"But Mom, it says "lemonade" on it."

I did tell them I'd drink whatever they brought me.

I had never before discovered the joys of gardening with a slight buzz on. Make no mistake about it, yard work suddenly got a lot more fun.