Signs of Life (And a Lot of Work to Do!)

We've finally had a string of five nice days this Spring.  Plus a day here and there (not usually on the weekend!).  The endless piles of snow are finally gone and I've been able to do some cleaning up after the deep Winter we had here in Northern Indiana.  I've picked up the stems and left over debris out of the vegetable garden.  I've also trimmed off all the broken stems from the majority of my shrubs.  I can't do much trimming on those until after they bloom.

I've walked by my perennial garden several times.  Kinda shake my head...a lot of work to do here.

You can see how weak and pathetic the grass looks.  I cleaned out the mailbox planter today.  This is how it has looked in the past:

Nice healthy looking bee balm, salvia and boltonia.  This is how it looks today.  Some boltonia, one or two partial salvia, and scattered bee balm.  And quite a bit of bare dirt:

The area that has me worried the most is the Rose bed.  There was quite a bit of damage on each rose bush. Here is the last time we saw the roses:

And here is today.  I had to do quite a bit of trimming.  All the canes were split and really dark and dead looking.  Most of the roses I ended up cutting back shorter than 6 inches.

You can't hardly see the plants until you are right on top of them.  The good news is most are showing some signs of life.  Though there are two I'm not so sure about yet.  Looks like I will be buying quite a bit of mulch, also!

Just as in the quote "hope Springs eternal," the usually first signs of Spring still managed to show up, just in time.  And there are signs of green popping up through all the debris.

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But my oh my, is there a LOT of work to do. I still haven't decided what to to with the new patio space!