Random Thoughts...

Good News:
Our son Jonathan, profiled in one of my earliest posts, has always struggled with writing. Not the creative part but the getting things onto the page part. His one time tutor said it is like there is a dam at his elbow that stops the words from being able to get through to his hand and then out of the pencil.
This week something worked that enabled Jonathan to work past that difficulty. I have mentioned before that we are reading Airborn. We are still reading this book. We are enjoying it and are at a place that the heroes of the book have just discovered the bones of a new, never before discovered species. At this point as I stopped reading I asked each of my children to take the story up from here and tell me what happens next and how would they handle such a discovery. Here comes the good news. Jonathan got very excited about this assignment and began writing. He wrote at home, then he took his notebook to the bowling alley with us to write some more. This young man who normally would struggle out a half a page to "please me" has written at least three pages. I most likely would not be able to easily read what he has written but when he read out loud what he had so far on our way to bowling, I was captivated to hear more. I am so thankful for those rays of hope that come through now and again.
Knowing how extremely difficult writing is for Jonathan I am more than a little bit proud of his accomplishment this week.




Flower Beds:
I want to make another flower bed in our front yard. I want to set it up in such a way that it is mostly self sufficient because I am a lazy summer gardener. I am good in the spring and the fall when it is not too hot but not so much in the heat and humidity of summer.
Any suggestions?
At this point my planning has gone this far: I want it to be a large triangular bed in the front corner of our yard facing an intersection. You can see it in the old picture I dug out of the memory of our computer at the top of this post. The landscaping in front of the house has changed already and one of the two trees has to come down, the one closest to the house.
I plan to have the boys help me remove sod and then thought I should have a small truckload of topsoil brought in and placed there where I can then plant Irises, butterfly bush, spring bulbs, Burning bushes, lavender, short blue grasses and black-eyed susans.
Add some mulch and give it a border of some kind....I could use help here....and watch it grow. I traditionally use garden "plastic" to keep the weeds down. Any thoughts on that?
How raised do you think this garden should be? The ground slopes sightly toward the road here.
Any advice will be carefully considered and I will post pictures of the process as we go. Maybe that will help me weed in the summer!

Blessings on your day!