Ready for Spring

I spent a couple hours today doing some pre-Spring Cleaning. My front yard has been looking miserable, full of dead leaves left from last autumn and litter that accumulates every day. I can usually keep up with the larger litter, but the tiny little wrappers for single pieces of candy, and the wrappers from cigars, and random scraps of plastic are a lot harder to keep up with--I wound up raking them into the compost pile along with all the leaves.

End result: the yard is clean and you can see the flowers getting ready to bloom. The daffodils in particular are just on the cusp of blooming.

The crocuses are doing especially well this year. I guess my yard agrees with them!

And here's the reason why I have to pick up litter in my yard every day. My neighbor is a corner store that never keeps their back yard clean. They've been cited for blight in the past, but it didn't do much good. The trash was back as soon as they passed re-inspection.

Next time I have a weekend off, I'll tackle the back yard. I need to wait at least another month to see how much of my garden is left in the back--the neighbor's dog jumped the fence this winter and chewed up several of my plants, destroying at least some of them completely. I suppose I should be grateful that's all he did--a neighbor down the street recently told me he's killed several cats. The dog is gone now, but his poop is still in my yard. Here's hoping that will be gone soon, too!