Boom. Spring.

Mar11

Last week we dipped down to some of the lowest temperatures of the winter, but this week it’s spring. I’m not complaining. We’ve been losing close to six inches of snow a day and this afternoon I came home to an almost cleared snowdrop bed along the East facing side of the house. I’m sure those of you in warmer climes are rolling your eyes at yet another snowdrop post, but I’m thrilled 🙂

Snowdrops opening even before the snow has a chance to melt. They’re as anxious for spring as I am!

I think it was sometime in January when I last saw bare earth here, and back then only one or two snowdrop noses were barely poking through the surface. Somehow they must have their own clocks and somehow must work their way up through the frozen soil. Hard to think of plants as something more than just cold-blooded victims of winter, but there was some kind of growth going on here in the frozen soil under the icy snow and I’m very grateful for it!

That wasn’t smart 4.0

Feb23

Seed starting isn’t the worst thing to do in the winter, but having your May seedlings sprouting in February is definitely not a good idea. It all started with last year’s massive seed starting failure. As usual I filled a few dozen pots and set them out in the cold to wait for spring, but the results were far from good, and only a few things sprouted. I thought it might be the weather, but now I’m leaning more towards a bad batch of soil. So this year for a bunch of seeds I figured I’d skip the soil and go back to the Deno method (click here to see how that works) of sprouting seeds in plastic bags. I set up a bunch of seeds which I thought would benefit from a nice bit of cold before sprouting, but also thought it might be a good idea to give them a week or so of warmth first. You can guess what happened.

Just five days later and I have a mess of sprouting seeds to deal with. After having failed twice already with these Californian thistle seeds it looks like they didn’t need a cold treatment after all!

So now I’m faced with a bunch of seedlings which will somehow have to survive my care under lights for at least 2 more months. Even with the cool temperatures out in the winter garden slowing down their growth it will still be a long haul. Another not so smart thing was finding a baggie of needle palm seeds which I must have given up on two years ago. Apparently there was a (now brittle and cracked) outer shell which I didn’t know about and which probably should have been removed prior to sowing. It will be a true testament to the lives of seeds if these go ahead and sprout now.

Seeds of the hardy needle palm. Stored moist for a year, bone dry for another, cracked out of their shells, rubbed along the file and replanted this month. Not likely to lead to success but you never know 🙂

I’m much more optimistic about seeds I received from this year’s HPS seed exchange. I potted up this happily sprouting red buckeye (aesculus pavia) seed yesterday and will try and find a cool spot for it until things warm up outside. Also arriving pre-sprouted are two packets filled with Southern Magnolia (m. grandiflora) seeds…. don’t ask about that, I don’t need one borderline hardy southern magnolia let alone two dozen, but I should have plenty of time to think that one over since I’m hoping they’ll be slow growing.

Some seed need to be planted immediately, so it helps that the donor of this seed ‘moist packed’ the seeds in damp peat when collected and then sent them in to the exchange. Sure beats receiving a dried out seed that will never sprout (such as my palm seeds became)

The rest of my seed exploits should also be in better shape. I did go traditional and put out two trays of little pots to suffer through the rest of winter under the deck, and they will hopefully not run into problems this year, but the rest of my perennial seeds went into baggies and are sitting in a box in the fridge. It all feels pretty promising to me. Even the ones that had already sprouted in their baggies are coming along nicely after a few days under the growlights.

Carefully planted into soil the little seedlings greened up and sprouted normally. I’m pretty sure I’m the only person in my end of Pennsylvania who has half-hardy Californian cobweb thistles (cirsium occidentale) growing along indoors under lights. That must mean something, I’m not sure what.

My little primrose continues to make me happy, and I’m sure you’ll also welcome seeing yet another picture! 😉

The first yellow primula polyanthus in full bloom. A little sparse, but still perfect….. and the cyclamen aren’t too shabby either!

Never fear, I also have a few onions sprouting so not everything is odd and nearly useless flowers…. but I also have to warn you there are two more primrose divisions on the cool windowsill which are only now starting to put up buds. If the weather keeps going as cold as it is you might be stuck looking at them all through March!

A bucket list for the depths of winter

Feb8

Does anyone else have a bucket list for mailorder nurseries?

I do, and each year I’m trying to check one or two off. Nurseries make the list for random reasons often more because of specialized and quirky offerings rather than for being part of some magic top ten for mailorder, so while the snow flies let me offer up my February to-do list 🙂

Everything is cold and frozen here. I used my phone and didn’t even have the motivation to open the back door for this.

In no particular order (well actually it has to start off with snowdrops since that’s all that’s on my mind 🙂

Temple Nursery. Just snowdrops. No online presence so if that’s what you need visit the equally obsessed Carolyn’s Shade Garden.
Edgewood Gardens. For the cyclamen obsessed. John hasn’t quit his day job but his night job is coming along quite well so check the list, send an email, and soon you’ll be in trouble.
The Lily Garden. Long ago I read an article in Horticulture magazine about Judith Freeman and her decades long commitment to lily breeding and I’ve wanted her lilies ever since. She’s the force behind Columbia-Platte Lilies and one of the pioneers of the cross-division hybrids which are the newest and best on the lily scene. She breeds for garden plants, not the florist trade so many of her introductions are growing worldwide and are bulletproof.
Odyssey Bulbs. Your first step into growing odd, obscure, rare little bulbs which you didn’t even know you needed until all of a sudden you NEEDED.
Augis Bulbs. Ordering bulbs from Lithuania makes absolutely no sense.
Klehm’s Song Sparrow Farm and Nursery. A beautiful catalog, beautiful website, the prices might be higher, but the quality and service match.
Ashwood Nurseries. A leader in hellebores out of the UK. Seeds would be my only option and at over 1$ a seed even before international postage costs….
Plant delights Nursery. What can I say? When the run of the mill perennials get old and you have money to burn.
Annies Annuals. Postage from the west coast may kill me, but I think this is the year I just have to order.
White Flower Farm. I can’t recommend them but back in the day their catalog was everything great about gardening with a good dose of snobbery on top. Still expensive but that might be all they have to offer.
Mums of Minnesota. Mums are disposable fall annuals, right? For some reason I need reliably perennial garden mums with odd and oversized flowers. Don’t judge me for not being satisfied with the anonymous lumps of color they sell around here….
Swan Island Dahlias. Don’t judge me for this either, I was young and experimenting and thought I needed many big, overblown dahlias.
Superstition Iris. There are many great iris sources, but this one deals in many of the historical varieties which I love and can’t get elsewhere. Find their photobucket listing, pick what you’d like and then email the owner for availability and pricing. Sometimes getting what you want takes a little more than a point and click.
Green Ice Nursery. Doesn’t everyone order fancy cyclamen seed from the Netherlands? I couldn’t be happier with the ones I received, and my bucket list check off has turned into a semi-annual splurge.
Fedco Seeds. I checked this one off just recently, it’s a co-op seed seller from Maine, reasonably priced with great varieties. What’s not to love?

I could go on of course. I’ve been dabbling in grafted conifers recently, plus have some strange need to add lady slipper orchids to my garden, so there will always be a to-do list, but for now I’ll keep this one. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still faithful to Santa Rosa Gardens for perennials, Brent and Becky for bulbs, and Pinetree garden seeds, but a boy’s got to dream and I need something to get through what’s been the coldest weather since last winter.

-7F (-22C) on a recent drive to work. Please congratulate me for actually stopping before taking a picture.

More snow is on its way tonight so winter is still in full swing, but yesterday temperatures edged above freezing for a few hours and I swear I heard a little bit of joy in the birdsong. Maybe it’s just me. In any case I think I’ll start a pot or two of onion seeds today and see if a few of the overwintering geraniums are worth saving. That and maybe I’ll look at some more mums that might need ordering 🙂

Let me know if I missed any great nurseries, I’m always more than happy to add a few new or forgotten ones!

Uh Hello Spring?

Mar26

Spring will start Thursday. Technically it should take off with the spring equinox, but around here Thursday will be the first day. I’m sure of that.

Today’s high just barely reached the freezing point and yesterday didn’t quite make it, but the forecast shows warming and I’m 100% positive spring will come Thursday and stay….. unless it doesn’t. The first winter aconite opened so that’s a hopeful sign, but to see the snowdrops all flat and frozen this morning didn’t warm my heart any.

First blooms of winter aconite (eranthis)

I’d been hoping to get a better picture of the snow crocus in the meadow, but the two warm days were only enough to bring out a few and these quickly became the spring tonic for our local rabbits. There will be secondary buds coming up, so fingers crossed, but how can I resent the little bunnies for their springtime snacking after the winter they’ve had? Look at that dead grass…. no vision of spring there.

snow crocus (almost) blooming out in the meadow

The new snowdrops are also just waiting…… This planting of galanthus viridapice (a green tipped snowdrop) has one bulb that is just a little earlier and looks just a little bit off, I suspect it’s mislabeled, perhaps it’s “sharlockii”.

galanthus viridapice? just waiting for warmer weather to open

Also on my mislabeled snowdrop list is this galanthus “Sam Arnott”. It’s not supposed to be double or green tipped…. also there’s not supposed to be a tulip sprouting there just in front, maybe I was a little hasty in throwing all the moldy bulbs into the compost… and then using the compost too soon. Oh the stuff that never gets mentioned in the gardening books 🙂

galanthus “Sam Arnott” and not galanthus “Sam Arnott”

But until Thursday rolls around, there’s not much else to look at. I did turn an optimistic corner and started the winter garden changeover. All the snowdrops and cyclamen were replaced with seedlings of lettuce and broccoli and hopefully by the time they’re a decent size it will be time to go outside. For now the highlight is a potful of muscari “Valerie Finnis”. I surprised myself by getting this one chilled and through the winter and then into bloom. It’s a nice look, too much foliage for my taste, but remember beggars can’t be choosers.

Muscari “Valerie Finnis” forced indoors under lights

Here’s another reason spring will come Thursday. My “in the green” snowdrops from Carolyn’s Shade Garden have arrived all safe and sound and need to go outside in the garden (“in the green” because they’re bareroot, actively growing, not dormant bulbs). They can handle plenty of frost, but the next two nights of 16F (-9C) lows might be too much of an insult for these city drops (Carolyn is located outside of Philadelphia). I’ll leave them to sit like this on a windowsill for the next two nights with just enough water to keep them wet, but not enough to have them sitting in water. I’m excited to have them and the plus side to this treatment is I get to admire them close up for a couple days. The blooming one is “Straffan”.

Snowdrops in the green from Carolyn’s Shade Gardens

So wish me luck. I don’t often complain about winter but I think I’m done with this one. The clock’s ticking and I’d like at least three weeks before people start complaining about the heat!

Hope for spring

Mar16

Last Sunday was a big day. The first snowdrop managed to pop up and drop the first pure white bloom of the 2014 season. Since then the not-so-pure snow has been on the retreat and temperatures have been almost seasonable! One night temperatures didn’t even drop below freezing, and if you ignore the 9F night (-13C) you could almost imagine spring is close.

I don’t know how they do it, but somehow even from the frozen earth, under a layer of snow and ice, the snowdrops (galanthus elwesii) are growing. I can’t imagine I missed this one in January during the last thaw. It must have continued to grow as melting snow trickled down through the ice and then voila! Spring 🙂Other old friends are reappearing from beneath the filthy snow remnants. Cyclamen hederifolium doesn’t look half bad after having spent the winter under a driveway snow pile.A few feet away cyclamen coum is a different story. The melting snow is leaving me with a mat of sloppy, rotting foliage. Just for the record, you won’t get these pretty pictures on just any blog. We’re here for the good, the bad…. and the ugly.

But spring is a fountain of hope, and even here I was able to find the first bloom coming up! I think they’ll be ok but it’s a different look without the backdrop of healthy foliage (and I hope the tubers are able to prep for next year without their leaves)

Here’s a standard pussy willow shot. Another one of my favorite plants. Not much to look at most of the year, but I’d never be without it 🙂The “solid” winter of 2013/14 has tied up the Northeast in longer than average snowcover, and as a result even the snowdrops are running late. I got this postcard from Hitch Lyman of The Temple Garden Nursery in upstate NY, and what a relief that I won’t be stressing over the long range weather report. By April there should be something! and even if some freak warm spell comes along there are enough other bulbs and hellebores to fill a garden visit. But change your calendars, the new Garden Conservancy open date is April 5 from 11 to 3.

Here’s how my first snowdrop (an anonymous galanthus elwesii given to me by a friend) looks….. and notice another dead cyclamen coum leaf right at it’s base. This spring they all look this way 😦 I’m going to go on about snowdrops now, so tune out if you’ve already had your fill. This week I’m struggling through my attempts to get better pictures. So far I’ve learned nothing, but out of the countless blurry and overexposed pictures I’ve taken, the law of averages has let me bumble into one or two acceptable shots. Here’s my nicest clump of galanthus nivalis (or most likely a hybrid thereof) which was rescued from the edge of a bulldozer rut during a local dairy farm’s gentrification. It’s the last survivor of what used to be swaths of snowdrops…. And here are three new treasures 🙂 -all variations on white, and all making me happier than a sparrow in spring (I’m assuming they’re happy, I finally hear them singing in the mornings). The first is galanthus “Gerard Parker”.
The next, with much smaller blooms and a more average snowdrop look, is galanthus “Chedworth”.and finally (with a drumroll implied) is galanthus “Primrose Warburg”. It’s a little thing, but special enough to make me happy I was able to finally get a non-blurry portrait.
Yesterday I noticed the first winter aconite is out. They’re still tiny and lack confidence, but I’m hoping spring is really on its way (although it’s snowing as I write this and a storm is predicted for tonight). Happy Sunday!

Should I cut my hellebores back?

Mar14

Now is the time of year when this question always comes up. In milder climates where the winter foliage on hellebores stays halfway decent year-round it’s more of a question, but here it’s a no-brainer. As soon as the weather eases up and I can work outside without being miserable, all the hellebore foliage comes off, brown or not. This winter especially, the normally attractive leaves are a disaster and won’t be missed at all by the plants. removing hellebore foliage

They look this way all over the garden and now that the snow is in retreat (hopefully) I can’t wait to clear this mess out. Even in years when the leaves are looking ok I still get rid of them and the plants don’t miss a beat. I think the blooms show off much better against a clean background and fresh leaves will be coming up soon enough 🙂

Just for the record, when I first started with hellebores I used to treasure each and every green leaf that made it through winter, and carefully left them in place while removing only the damaged ones. My thinking of course was that every green bit helped the plant produce food. While that’s true, the few weeks of photosynthesis lost doesn’t seem to make a difference, and I’ve learned the plants are much tougher than I give them credit for. The only exception to this rule would be if you’re growing any of the taller stemmed (caulescent type) hellebores. Don’t cut them to the ground, the tall stem will be sprouting blooms at this time of year, and you’ll only want to remove damaged leaves.

Hopefully my “little Gem” southern magnolia will be as resilient as the hellebores. It’s also sporting brown and damaged leaves, but I suspect it will also pull through. My scenario for this plant will be a complete loss of leaves once the weather warms, and then new growth in May…. it will look worse for a while, but my fingers are crossed and even with temps back down in the single digits tonight I’m trying for optimism 🙂

Do I detect a thaw?

Mar8

Longer days and stronger sunshine doesn’t necessarily mean it’s springtime. Warmer weather and a lack of snowstorms means spring to me, and since we’re 0-2 on that front, this weekend’s forecast of almost normal weather gives me some hope that the snow may eventually melt. My fingers are crossed that the receding snow will reveal healthy snowdrop sprouts, and in the front bed along the foundation this might be true. This bunch has come along since the last time it was uncovered (Jan 13th), but it’s still far behind last year’s bloom date of Jan 31st. Still it amazes me that even under feet of snow and temperatures down to 0F (-18C) they continue to grow, disregarding the frozen soil and surrounding ice.

Indoors is a different story. The forced snowdrops are at their peak, and I regret giving them the cold shoulder in my last post.

There’s plenty of variation in bloom shape, plant height, and color and pattern of the green markings inside. I’m quite pleased all over again and it makes me even more excited the ones outside might someday open!

A better gardener would keep track of their favorites, and carefully plant them out for observation…. but I’m just fine with big patches of anonymous white. If there are a few real special ones I can separate them out, but we’ll see what happens once they have a chance to grow outside in the real garden. The pale drops are nice, but the dark green markings such as this one also look interesting once open.

This one has such a stumpy, stout stem (but small bloom) that it really contrasts with the daintier one to the lower right of this photo.

Having potted up all 200 of my bulbs for growing indoors, there are pots all over. I might have gone a bit overboard since usually the windowsills are reserved for post-bloom hangout until things warm up enough to go outside.

I’ve been pollinating away, so hopefully there will be a few snowdrop seeds to start this summer. My fingers are crossed since it looks like the sprouts I had coming along with so much promise in January all died during the last couple arctic blasts.

There’s a different kind of hope though. Birds are singing in the sunshine in a way not heard since last spring, and this little guy was spotted rooting around under the feeder. He’s not a mouse or vole, but a little half-blind shrew. I’ve never seen one out (alive) but this guy let me take his close-up from about 12 inches away while he burrowed around in the seed hulls looking for bugs and whatnot. He’s an interesting guy, one of only a few poisonous mammals (their saliva is toxic enough to kill a similar sized animal), and their hyperactive lifestyle has them eating nearly their entire weight in food each day. They’re also a little stinky, which we discovered last fall when an opening in the foundation let a couple into the basement.

Stay out by the feeder is all I have to say… that and have a great weekend!

They say it’s spring, I don’t agree.

Mar23

Easter decorations

All the signs are there, the calendar, the birds, the rabbits, the plants, but one thing is missing. It’s still crappy grey windy weather and I don’t feel like spring at all. In fact after a snow day this week, I’m expecting another on Monday when another 2-4 inches comes our way. Hardly the weather of egg hunts and daffodils, but there’s not much you can do about it. I suppose the silver lining is once things start going it will be so late the threat from late freezes shouldn’t exist…. but you never know.

Every time the snow receeds (the sun when it does come out is pretty strong) the plants that reappear seem to have grown a little more. The cyclamen coum is really taking off now in spite of the cold, and the winter aconite wins the distinction of being a flower so early it’s actually now over for the year. My cyclamen picture doesn’t really capture the glow these early cottoncandy colored flowers give off on a grey day.

A few hardy Cyclamen coum in the garden

Crocus are trying, and on the first warm day will burst out fully opened. It amazes me how these flowers seem to explode into bloom when the temperature rises. The snow crocus are first with yellows and creams and smaller flowers, the bigger dutch hybrids are a little later with dark purples.

Yellow species crocus

We will see this spring how my crocus lawn is developing, it’s a bit sparse right now but I see lots of sprouts and I’m hoping more will show. Here’s the only lawn picture I got before the rabbits nibbled off every single bloom.

Purple dutch crocus hybrids

A sheltered spot near the house has the first hybrid crocus ready to bloom. The other ones planted in the open garden are barely just appearing through the mulch.

For all the complaining, spring is not much later than average. My less than scientific investigation puts us maybe a week behind a normal year. I’ve kept records of bloom dates for a couple years and like looking back to see what’s up and what’s missing. My records should be more organized and I should plan a little better but this is about all my procrastinating self can handle. Right now I feel like I’m already behind and should have more seeds started and more cuttings rooted, but you know how it goes, you’re either much too early or (for me at least) much too late.

seed exchange packets

I guess it would help if I stuck with the plan and didn’t take advantage of the surplus round of the North American Rock Garden Society’s seed exchange. Here are 40 more packets waiting for me to do something with them. Did I need them? Of course not, but who can resist giving excess seeds a home and only spending $10 dollars doing it?

So in the meantime I’ll start the peppers and tomatoes and stick with the indoor gardening. Under lights the onions are coming along, the snowdrops are starting to yellow and the cyclamen coum is still showy. Two months of indoor color during the dullest time of the year is pretty good in my book!

Onion seedlings coming along under the shop lights

Snowdrops and snow

Mar17

First days of spring come and go but for me a major turning point is the first garden tour. Saturday was the day, and a friend and I headed up to Trumansburg NY to visit Hitch Lyman’s garden and his collection of snowdrops and other early bloomers. I won’t bore you with the details of the “should be a 2hr drive” but the clock put it at closer to 4 hours and I’m sure that was due in a large part to not having a map, not really paying attention to directions, and having a co-pilot with a lot of new stories to share. So we got there a bit later than planned, got to see a little more of the country side, and got to see a few more cities than we should have. At least we didn’t end up in Canada is all I’ll add.

A snowdrop visit to upstate New York in below freezing weather and amidst snow qualls isn’t everyone’s idea of a good time. Most of the garden is still asleep and when you pull up it’s more the house you notice, and less so the gardens.

The house at Temple Gardens

This open day was organized by the Garden Conservancy and according to their description the 1848 farmhouse was moved to the site in 1990. What a job that must have been, and I’m going to guess it needed a bit of restoration when it got here. On our side trip to reach Trumansburg, we came down rte 414 from Geneva Falls and experienced first-hand some other “in need of renovating” historical houses. Some fascinating buildings, almost kind of ghost-towny in spots, and I’m going to make another guess that the local economy can’t support the upkeep on these grand old houses. So they sit and slowly decay.

Back to the garden. As you can see from the house photo most of the front acreage is naturalized fields with a few specimen plantings here and there. The drive up to the house is also a mix of naturalized shrubs and trees, but along both sides are banks of earth spotted with all kinds of treasures.

A sloped bank of hardy cyclamen and various snowdrops

The snow and cold had many of them lying down but there was still plenty to see. We checked in for our visit and headed around the house. Plantings close to the building were pretty subdued and actually the direct opposite of what most gardeners do. I put all the little stuff right up around the house, but here the only plantings were a raised terrace with a planted fieldstone sitting area.

The terrace out back

I’ve seen springtime pictures from this vantage point, and the white wisteria and crabapples make for a much more lush view than the current frozen winter aconite among the paving.

Around back is the namesake temple for Mr. Lyman’s Temple Nursery…. snowdrops are the specialty in case you missed that.

Behind the temple you can make out the dark green of the yew and boxwood that surround the formal garden. I didn’t get any pictures inside the garden, but it’s a formal layout of geometric planting beds filled with lilac, peonies, colchicums, hellebores, and of course snowdrops and other spring bulbs.

The formal garden entrance

Deer seemed to be a problem outside the hedge and protective fence, with plenty of nibbled and buck rubbed shrubs, but once inside there were many signs of spring… in spite of my freezing fingers and cold toes.

Some early Lenten roses (Helleborus niger) in the formal garden beds

Galanthus ‘Jade’

Of course there were snowdrops(here’s “Jade”), but the bulk of the snowdrops were in the next (and last) section of the garden. The woodland garden was furthest from the house and consisted of a narrow path that wound its way through the secondary growth of trees and shrubs that lined the back field.

Here’s how the path looked.

The carefully marked woodland path, lined with snowdrops.

There were small clumps of drops everywhere and I was nervous to even use the outer edges of the trail since many clumps edged up to the path. For a snowdrop fan there was interest galore…. for a non-snowdrop person I suspect they would want someone to widen the path, throw down some mulch, and pick up a few of the fallen twigs.

An authentic snowdrop woodland peppered with clumps of named snowdrop varieties

Here are a few clump closeups from the woodland area.

Galanthus nivalis sandersii

Galanthus ‘Diggory’

Galanthus ‘Lapwing’

Galanthus ‘R D Nutt’

Unlabeled double snowdrop

I’ve got a few more pictures taken of the bank along the driveway but I think I’ll save them for another post. For now I’ll leave you with some interior shots of the temple (it’s not just for show!). After losing all sensation in my fingertips, we allowed ourselves a break inside by the temple fire.

Warming up in front of the fireplace at the Lyman garden.

I hope we weren’t crossing any poor-garden-conduct boundaries by going inside, but the door was slightly ajar and the fire was so inviting. Plus by then we were freezing, and a passing snow squall wasn’t helping matters much. As we were looking around and considering building our own garden temples, I saw this above the door and had the feeling we were just as welcome here as we had been in the rest of the garden.

Inside details of the temple

Thanks for having us Mr. Lyman.

First day of spring?

Mar12

The sun was out and temperatures crept up to the fifty plus range, so I did what every self respecting suburban boy does when the bad weather breaks. I washed the cars. Donna was pleased, clean cars and an industrious husband are far more respectable than a spouse who shuffles around the yard looking for crocus sprouts, but I couldn’t avoid poking around in the crusty flower beds. Here’s the one right next to the front walk.

The ugly reality

It was time for the trash and dead banana plant carcass to disappear so that there will be room for spring sprouts. Sure it’s early, but I think everything there will be fine even with a couple more freezes. I feel much better now.

A fresh new look

Sorry, but I can’t help putting in one more winter aconite and snowdrop photo. Sure it’s the same two inch plant from an earlier post, but in case you didn’t notice, the subtitle for this blog is “more than you ever wanted to know about my garden”, so to keep it honest I go for the overkill.

Shoots and flowers coming up to make spring a thing

A low of 20F is forecast for later in the week and winter hasn’t been completely crushed, but I’m going to call this past weekend spring (even if it’s just really really early spring).

Next I should consider cleaning the hellebore bed, it could use some attention too.

More of the ugly reality

The pussywillow at the end isn’t waiting so I better get on it, but at least for now the winter grime is off the cars and a couple plants have some breathing room.

Hope for spring

sorta like suburbia

more than you ever wanted to know about my garden

Category Archives: late winter

Boom. Spring.

That wasn’t smart 4.0

A bucket list for the depths of winter

Uh Hello Spring?

Hope for spring

Should I cut my hellebores back?

Do I detect a thaw?

They say it’s spring, I don’t agree.

Snowdrops and snow

First day of spring?