Inching to Summer

Jun7

Well these pictures are only about a week old, so I think that’s an improvement in blog efficiency? They’re just a couple of updates on the garden and I guess the biggest ones are that the gardener hasn’t been too lazy, and the iris were nice, and I felt the pressure to take a few pictures before they were all gone. Honestly though, I can barely remember back this far. These spring days are busy, and so much is focused on what’s next it’s hard to live in the moment let alone remember the past, but I believe this was one of those days when clouds rolled in but not too many, the lawn was longer but not too long, the weeds were growing but not too grown, and I was tired but not too tired to take one more tour around the garden with a camera. So let me start in the most urgent area, my NEED for more chive colors! Chives as you know are an herb nearly everyone can stomach, with a mild onion taste which steps in when parsley is busy elsewhere. I could go on now and possibly bring in all kinds of lore and growing information together and try to make this blog a useful resource… but that’s a lot of work, and I’m pretty sure you could prompt AI to write up as long a discourse on chives as you’d like so here I am empowering you. Copy and past “write a three page paper on the history use, and cultivation of chives” into the prompt at ChatGPT and there you go. Before you know it you’ll be thanking ChatGPT for an interesting read and then asking what it’s doing later and if it has time to chat some more. I guess I should say my goodbyes now and thank you for following this blog for as long as you have.

Pink ‘Forescate’, white ‘Album’, and the typical mauve of chives (Allium schoenoprasum) in the potager. I think they’re amazing.

Before moving on to the last of the iris, let me also mention the fun fact that your innocent looking chives is a widespread species, native to scattered spots in North America, across Europe and Northern Asia, all the way to Korea and Japan, and as such shows plenty of variation, and as such should be in my garden as a strong purple as well as the colors already here. Maybe someday.

Neglected iris (‘Tiffany’, 1935ish) blooming as if they were pampered in a more appropriate spot. Older, ‘historic’ bearded iris are much more forgiving than their ruffly modern cousins, although ‘Tiffany’ here isn’t exactly a plain Jane.

Perhaps it’s obvious, but when we jump right from chives to bearded iris you can see there’s not much planning or organization or connection in the writing of this blog, and to most everyone out there it’s obvious this is an entirely human production and 0% AI, but I guess just like I assume everyone knows I’m not endorsed by the multi-colored chives association when I go on about chives, I also assume you can see there’s no AI contribution to this blog. You knew that of course but I’m rambling tonight so when that happens I tend to re-state the obvious. No AI writing and all the weeds and mess in the photos are real as well. Wow is an AI blog sounding better and better with every keystroke!

Iris ‘Ominous Stranger’ is cool but as a 1992 “historic” it puts this gardener into the historic category. Hmmm. Anyway, let me point out the from-a-bag clematis behind it. Second year from one of those cheap bags which show up in the early spring and are dead by planting season, this ‘Nelly Moser’ survived!

I guess I’m replaceable. Probably not replaceable, but invisible is just as final when this blog is lost in a horde of AI generated articles and banter… all the AI stuff which will soon overwhelm a person’s search results. Come to think of it it’s not unlike the early days of the internet when people were generating tons of cool bits of information, but then slowly it shifted to everyone selling something and the info became a generic lure to one shopping site or another. Oh. Iris. I like the historic ones. They’re hardy and fragrant, and each year I claim I’ll take better care of them and then I don’t.

A weedy patch of ‘Darius’ an 1873 era historic iris.

This might be the year. I want to put a bunch on the berm, so we will see.

‘Color Carnival’, 1949 persists in terrible and wet spots where it can but would rather not. A modern iris planted here would not have been as accommodating and would have become stinky mush years ago.

Honestly iris are some of the most amazing flowers. It’s hard to find an ugly one and I think you can only do it when some of the oddly colored or over-ruffled ones edge into an area which isn’t your taste. A few non-bearded iris which are flowering now (and to my taste) are the yellow flags and their relatives.

Iris ‘Berlin Tiger’ is easy and unique. Maybe not bed of geraniums impressive, but when you get all caught up in the pattern it’s amazing.

Okay, I have to move this iris thing along and won’t mention much on foliage. There’s ‘Gerald Darby’ who emerges in spring with a strong purple color on the foliage which looks great for a couple weeks. The foliage fades to green, but the simple blooms are also nice, and like ‘Berlin Tiger’ he’s easy to grow. A few others have yellow emerging foliage or variegated, or… the iris family is big, there’s plenty to grow. Trust me, you’ll run out of space before you run out of plants to try.

An inter-species cross, ‘Holden’s Child’ has smaller blooms but a long season.

Peonies are starting and I don’t grow many. Peonies, iris, roses, clematis… some of the most beautiful flowers, are all coming on now and you need to be careful before the whole garden is filled with May and June color and there’s nothing left for July. Worse things could happen. You could spend the rest of the summer at the beach if you overdo June, and that’s not bad either.

Peony ‘Do Tell’ was there and I bought it. Now it’s stuffed in where it has to fight off golden hops each summer and that’s probably not ideal. Try to avoid buying every amazing peony you find just like I avoid buying every amazing snowdrop I find. well…. forget that, you do you.

Sorry, as usual I’m going on too much. Let me wrap it up with some wider scenes since the abundant rain has everything lush and excellent, and the gardener has had some success keeping things in order this spring.

The street border is possibly going to get a firm thinning once the Amsonia is done blooming. The Amsonia will be cut back to about 1-2 feet and behave much better than if left alone. Also this will eliminate all the seeds which will otherwise overrun this corner.

Success in May and early June isn’t much of a flex in my opinion, since nearly everything still looks fresh and new right now, but I will take my wins as they come. Last year I was still moving dirt and sowing lawn at this time, so anything looks better than that.

This end of the front border is now anchored by my beloved weeping white spruce (Pinus glauca ‘Pendula’). Someday I should dig up a few baby pictures from when it landed on my doorstep as a tiny mail ordered graft. The golden ninebark (Physocarpus opulifolius ‘Luteus’?) behind the spruce also came here as a twig in a box.

The almost a climber rose ‘Westerland’ is also in the far end of the front border. I love the color but might have to move it to a viewed-from-afar location so I don’t feel as ashamed of the foliage issues later in the year.

One last overview. It appears the potager is becoming the new tropical garden. The banana is out for the year and off to a great start. A brugmansia and cannas have been planted as well, it should be fun.

That’s it on the “wide views” so not as may as I thought, but there’s other fun afoot such as all the other summer stuff which needs to go in on the deck and into pots. Many people take care of this by June first…. I always have some stupid idea slowing me down, like how should I re-invent this wheel?

A friend gifted me a Brazilian plume (Justicia carnea) last year and I love it. The mother plant froze last winter but not before I took a few cuttings (which, just for reference root very easily).

Fortunately the endless rain has kept my neglected pots watered and my optimism alive. Few annuals are going in this year… assuming things don’t hit some major end-of-spring sale temptation… and the bulk of things are out of the winter garden and back for another year. There are still a few new treasures picked up here and there, but overall I have no guilty splurges to confess. Maybe one amazing Brugmansia and a palm that’s taller than me but I’ll only feel guilty if I return to the store today to pick up a second palm. It was $15. It’s taller than I am. It’s like a tropical resort is coming together on my back deck and you know how much a resort trip would cost, so clearly this is a money saving option thank you.

The pot ghetto next to the garage. Let me point out the two flats of dahlia seedlings lower left. ‘Bishop’s Children’ seed from the Mid Atlantic HPS seed exchange and I may fill the potager with dahlias this weekend.

I should get to work and not go palm shopping. We will see, but in the meantime I hope you enjoy an excellent weekend.

Spring is Quite Awesome

May24

Okay. So if this blog post goes up in the next day or two it’s just a three week gap and not four, and I guess that’s better, even if I’m forcing myself to sit here right now and get something done while my heart is saying do nothing, crawl into bed, find a blanket, play mindless phone games….

The violas of spring look great, they love the cool weather and frequent rains, and for once I like the color mix in this pot. Too often I impulsively buy a celebratory mess of spring shades and hope for the best, and then act confused when the colors still look like a mess when planted!

With this week’s chilly and damp weather a blanket is definitely required even though a couple days prior the air conditioning had to go on to fight the heat and humidity. Those temperatures, alongside regular rains and then a little too many rains, has the garden bursting with growth and color and fortunately not with fugus and blight yet, and I hope it stays that way. I grabbed a bunch of pictures last weekend during a gap in the rain, and my favorite subject was the lovely rose ‘Aicha’. I love her soft shade of yellow, the simplicity of her single flowers, and the arching shape to the bush. She has a light fragrance, and right now I can forgive the leaf spot and only a few here-and-there sparse reblooming flowers in late summer.

The yellow of ‘Aicha’ ushers in the yellow/blue/purple phase of the front garden.

I picked up ‘Aicha’ at Der Rosenmeister nursery on a spring trip to Ithaca NY one year, and each summer since it has been a rose dream to make it up to their open garden party (June 13th this year btw) which Leon hosts each year. It’s a party with music and fun, plus hundreds of full-bloom, cold-hardy rambling and climbing roses massed across the grounds of his home. I would make a wish list of course. It took me days of contemplating to fit in just three, so a list would be trouble which I don’t need but where’s the fun in that?

Somewhat fitting into the yellow/blue/purple phase is the variegated Iris pallida ‘Aureo Variegata’ which I love for foliage as much as the lemony scented flowers.

It’s actually still early for roses so lets bask in the show of the bearded iris first. The iris don’t like the rain right now, but last summer’s drought was just what they do like, and this spring they’re showing their appreciation of the previous year’s rot-free dry weather. I probably said I wanted more last summer and then did nothing to accomplish that, so this year I have a plan. I think they would do very well on the berm. I’m at a point where I want to plant something appropriate on the berm, and as long as nobody complains too vigorously about weeds in the iris I think this summer I’ll give it try. Younger me would aim for weeding after planting, but I’m starting to understand my limits as I get a bit more experience, and I can warn everyone right now that the iris on the berm will be weedy and I apologize ahead of time.

‘Sunol’ is an oddly colored iris which would probably do better on a weedy berm rather than the garden since it’s just as crowded, but less sunny here. I believe the “dwarf” blue spruce is squeezing it out faster than I wanted to imagine.

I guess you can’t talk about the May garden without mentioning weeds. One of this year’s goals was to eliminate a few from the garden and mostly from the lawn, and when a friend saw that post they mentioned the idea of a wildflower section in a corner of the lawn as a a safe-zone to balance the weedless-lawn effort. Upon hearing this excellent suggestion I realized that what I wrote was really a bunch of misleading nonsense. Such is often the case for this blog but in this case it gives a totally different picture than intended. I forgot that the lawn purists consider a lawn as a place for grass and only grass, and oh my gosh that’s not what I’m aiming for since in my opinion a grass-only lawn is about as boring as boring can be. My weeds are narrowleaf plantain and creeping charlie. I hate the plantain and have grown tired of the creeping charlie so they are now the two weeds who’s numbers I am trying to reduce. Violets as well but I hesitate to mention that since they’re so beloved, but they seed everywhere and are nearly impossible to get out of flower beds, so enough is enough. My biggest problem in spraying to control these three weeds is that the clover and dandelions are also killed if spray get on them, so I have to be careful and precise to miss them. Hawkweed is also a treasure in my lawn, and to be honest I’ve transplanted plugs to get it into new spots… actually in the older parts of town I’ve seen a lawn or two with a few shades of yellow which I’d love in my own lawn, but I’m not quite ready to knock on doors asking for weed samples. So just to be clear, for me a weed-free lawn is only grass-based, and the green is well spangled with the blooms of a carefully curated blend of colors, just with less plantain mostly because I just don’t like the stuff… unless it’s the wide-leaf form in purple which I guess I do like…

Bearded iris are not weeds in any sense of the term. This is ‘Elsinore’, one of my favorites.

So rest assured this garden is quite safe from a turf obsession. To lose finches picking through dandelion seedheads, bunnies grazing the clover patches, and bees working the birds foot trefoil would be sad. Actually I feel a little concerned when I see a vast expanse of fertilizer-hyped, weed-killer soaked turf and think of the hours wasted keeping it that way and the dollars which could have been spent on better pursuits. Those people obviously never grew a snowdrop nor jealously eyed a patch of English daisies growing in a garden they visited last weekend and then thought of their own pot of English daisies and then spent the next three days staring out at a rainy garden wondering where a good spot would be to plant them in the lawn… Hmmm. You may see why little actual work happens here when the gardener wastes hours thinking about where in the lawn to plant new weeds.

Glaucium corniculatum blackspot or red horned-poppy

The colchicum bed with a few not-colchicums filling in the gaps. The orange poppies are red horned-poppies (Glaucium corniculatum) and love a dry, poor soil which doesn’t speak well of the soil in this bed.

Enough about weeds. May here is about flowers and the enthusiastic growth of plants, and besides the iris here are a few odds and ends of treasures and tasks.

Robin's PlantainErigeron pulchellus 'Lynnhaven Carpet

Matt Bricker will often bring a few non-galanthus goodies to the Galanthus Gala, and one year a pot of Robin’s Plantain (Erigeron pulchellus ‘Lynnhaven Carpet’) came home with me. It’s a nice low groundcover with soft leaves and cheerful daisies in spring and is about as easy to grow as anything.

Not that I’m anything close to a purist but I just noticed the horned poppies and Robin’s Plantain (a daisy not to be confused with the previously mentioned plantain) are North American natives and to keep with a theme for more than a minute here’s one last shrubby, maybe someday small treeish native thing, the red buckeye (Aesculus pavia). In a miserably hot and dry spot on the berm it carries on, growing inch by inch and blooming faithfully each spring. It would like a better spot but carries on well enough with what it has, the show increasingly clashing with the pink and mauve rhododendrons which also suffer on the slope here.

Red buckeye (Aesculus pavia) is listed as a hummingbird magnet but as of yet… it’s just a pretty shrub on the berm. I’m hiding buckeye seeds each year and maybe one day they’ll carpet the industrial park.

That was possibly a full minute of focus on how unfocused I am, but as I’m sure you know there are just so many other things going on it’s hard to stick to a task. A gardener goes out with the ambition of transplanting a sedum but sees a branch to prune and a weed to pull and then gets lost looking for a trowel they remember using two days ago and before you know it the rain started again and you’re wondering why you spent twenty minutes deadheading hellebores instead of mucking leaves out of the pond. There’s a mile long to-do list, which I’m sure is the same for every gardener (and if not and you are that rare exception please keep that an inside thought) and perhaps this weekend the list will get shorter before it gets even longer. I don’t even know what my list says so here’s a guesstimate. Most everything is out for the summer, most vegetables are coming along, a few new plants are here, but the summer bulbs and back porch have not yet been attended to.

The bromeliads are slightly pale but nearly as lush as when they came inside last fall. They’re almost too easy and this gardener is only allowed to buy maybe one or (at most) two new ones this year since that’s ok and not a sign of addiction at all.

On a plus side the garage is still being used for vehicles rather than entering the annual contest to hold as many empty pots, wheelbarrows, boxes, bags of potting soil and tables full of drying bulbs and corms as possible, and to achieve that the driveway has stayed open enough to drive on. It’s basic math since I am out numbered now. Three out of the four drivers here agree that the driveway is better utilized for cars rather than as a makeshift summer nursery/pot ghetto/staging area for excessive plant additions to the garden, and now the gardener is forced to hide his compulsion just around the corner, alongside the garage 😉

golden ninebark seedling Physocarpus opulifolius

My friend Kathy Purdy warns that stray tree and shrub seedlings should be addressed when small and not allowed to sink their roots in and create a removal issue down the line, but… golden ninebark seedlings (Physocarpus opulifolius) are so cute and can’t possibly ever be in the wrong place… right?

That’s it from here. It is now Saturday morning and once the last person asleep here wakes up we shall go to a coffee shop and the two children will make us breakfast… assuming we pay for it and tip them as well, and then after that I’m sure something will get done here even if your guess is as good as mine as to what it will be. The lawn needs cutting, so I’ll probably head outside and start by planting petunias next door and then check the pool filter. Maybe I’ll eventually find that trowel again, who knows, but in the meantime I hope you have a wonderful spring weekend!

Behind on Everything

May14

Happy Mother’s Day! Here in the hill-like mountains of Eastern Pennsylvania the sun is out and there’s promise of another beautiful day, and I hope yours is as well. It’s been staying cooler and I’ve much enjoyed it, but the strong sun and a decent rain have everything sprouting and growing and of course have put me way behind where I should be. Right now it’s looking like a season of repairing the garden from construction rather than a season of getting everything planted and weeded, but we will see where the energy meter goes to. We’re currently at ‘moderate’ but sadly that means energy for painting and closet building with an occasional break to dig and move tons of dirt, and not weeding and planting, but at least the very last of the tulips are still in bloom… and the Motrin and Tylenol supply is well stocked 😉

The “broken” tulip “Insulinde” is still holding strong. I love it this year, even with a subtle dark and dusty look, the swirls and patterns can draw anyone’s attention.

Nearly all the tulips in the Potager are dead-headed and focused on fattening up bulbs for next year, and even if that sounds sad remember that this weirdo looks forward to digging the bulbs and seeing how well they bulked up. I’ve set some old wooden pallets and wire mesh aside and hope to throw a few bulb racks together for drying… so that’s one more super-important thing added to the to-do list.

Another tulip who’s coloring has been “broken” by virus is ‘Mabel’, an antique dating to 1856.

We will see if that happens. Iris season is coming, and the first of my favorites began to open yesterday and I forgot how fragrant some of them are. The scents of grape and lemon are drifting through parts of the garden, on top of the last of the wisteria and lilac aromas. It’s a nice break from the diesel exhaust and asphalt odors which you run into just down the street.

One last one. ‘Black and White’ goes back to at least 1920 and to me is somewhat similar to ‘Insulinde’, especially when the latter is short on its yellow base color.

Totally without scent, there’s one more cool thing to share this morning. A mystery seedling on the side of the house has revealed its identity when the poppy-like buds finally opened up into bright red blooms. For the past year I’ve been watching fuzzy foliage rosettes grow in this bone-dry, hard packed spot in full sun, and have suspected the gardener threw seeds of something odd here and forgot or didn’t even expect them to grow, but here they are.

The blackspot horned poppy, Glaucium corniculatum, is an European annual or biennial which is probably a weed most everywhere else, but here I’m pleased to see it. ‘Poor to moderate, dry soils’ describes its preferred growing conditions so it’s likely to seed around here… until we get a monsoon year and they all rot, devastating the gardener…

So I bring you more virused tulips and horned poppies this week. With all the beauty of spring I feel peonies and clematis would be more welcome but I’m sure Instagram is full of that, so maybe this is more refined? I doubt it, so thanks for reading anyway and I hope you have a wonderful week.

On the Eve of May

Apr30

I hope no one is expecting the entertaining, witty narrative which usually accompanies these posts. It’s been raining all day and the gloom has me drowsy, plus hours of inhaling varnish fumes this weekend probably killed off more brain cells than I can afford, so be prepared for a somewhat dull post.

The potager last Friday. The cool weather has been good to the tulips, but wind and rain is starting to take its toll.

As the first order of business I want to reassure everyone with the announcement that I have resolved my overabundance of yellow tulips problem. They were looking a little tired Saturday so I just yanked a good amount of them and tossed them on the compost. Sure they’ll probably show up everywhere now, as the compost will be contaminated by bulblets, but today I’m pleased with myself. Never mind that it took me weeks to come up with this solution, despite the fact many people pull their tulips after bloom, but in this garden I celebrate where I can.

My only 2022 tulip purchase, ‘Tom Pouce’. Five bulbs purchased, one came up yellow, but I love the other four for their delicious yellow with pink frosted colors.

So in a moment of distraction I started wondering who Tom Pouce was, since there’s also a pink and yellow lily, and pink and yellow daffodil named after him, and to have three flowers carry your name must count for something impressive, so off to the library I went.

Or Google… and then Wikipedia… “A tompoes or tompouce is a pastry in the Netherlands and Belgium. It is the local variety of the mille-feuille or Napoleon, introduced by an Amsterdam pastry baker and named after Admiraal Tom Pouce, the stage name of the Frisian dwarf Jan Hannema”. Apparently it’s a pastry taken seriously in the low countries. Color may stray, the pink and yellow may change based on national holidays or serious sporting events, but you don’t mess around with either shape or ingredients. It sounds like a pastry I would enjoy getting to know, although there also seems to be a little bit of a quandary on how it should be correctly eaten. I believe that discussion is outside the scope of this tulip post, so I’ll stop now and wonder about Frisian dwarves all on my own 😉

Not named after a pastry, ‘Insulinde’ is an example of one of the virused ‘broken tulips’ which are a virus risk, but just amazing enough to try growing anyway. This one dates back to 1915.

Soon the tulips will be a thing of the past, and just like snowdrops and daffodils it will be another 12 months before they return, but at this time of the year it barely matters. There’s so much coming along that even on a miserably rainy and dark Sunday you can’t help be a little excited. In the potager the wisteria is blooming again, and although it should only be a year since the last time, it’s really three since late freezes have done it in for a couple seasons. The scent of the flowers fills the potager air, even stronger than lilacs and probably just as sweet.

This wisteria only looks like it is supported by the pergola since I wouldn’t dare release it onto crushable aluminum supports and a frame of mere two by fours. Once a week for the entire summer stray tentacles of vine are cut back to a leaf or two to keep it under control. This plant is a beautiful monster.

There’s more blooming and growing out there, but I’ll spare you all except this last peony. Paeonia daurica subsp. mlokosewitschii is a mouthful so most refer to this plant as ‘Molly the Witch’. I did want the pure yellow version but when my seedling finally bloomed it showed to be a pale yellow with a pink tint, which is also within the range for this species. I love the foliage but to me the bloom is relatively small and somewhat mild mannered. Time will tell if it keeps a spot here in the garden, but even if it doesn’t I’m sure some gardening friend would take it in for me.

A nice pink tinted version of Paeonia daurica subsp. mlokosewitschii.

The rain is coming down strong again and it’s getting late. There’s work tomorrow. Ugh. I think I need something sugary and fatty or just plain greasy, because I feel like Monday has already arrived and I’m not excited. Enjoy your week at least!

Tulips

Apr24

It was warmer than expected and most of the garden’s tulips opened for the weekend. That sounds good but it was hotter than they like and a few fried up, and then the wind picked up and they took another beating… and then we had a downpour…so today they look a little tired, but the cooler weather in this week’s forecast will be perfect to keep them fresh looking for another week at least. It’s not botanical garden glorious, but I’m quite pleased with it, and also grateful that a couple friends were able to stop by and take a look as well.

Mixed Darwin tulips in the vegetable garden beds.

Some ‘Spryng Break’ lined out with the others

Another view of the potager beds

Honestly it looks much better in the closeups. From a distance you can see all the “works in progress” around the yard and these beds look more like some maniac just stuffed too many flowers into a tin can vase, but again I’m pleased with it and wondering if I have enough beds of tulips yet 🙂

Some of the tulips out front. Like everything else they need dividing but with a gardener who just waddles around the beds smiling at each new bloom there’s only a slight chance that could happen.

Originally the mix came around when I collected stray tulips and wasn’t sure what they were, so just planted them all together. There have only been a few times when I wasn’t happy with them all together, and when that happened I just pulled out the offenders and all was well, but this year I’m wondering if growing a few as separate color blocks might be fun. I’m envisioning a Dutch bulb field look with rows of color, and since I think I have too many yellows anyway as long as I’m separating those out might as well separate a few other colors as well, right? -I can almost hear you saying obviously…

I like them. I think I need a few more still. We all have our weaknesses.

Marking and sorting out tulips sounds like a lot of work. I may have to plant them with some better spacing so they can sit where they are for two seasons rather than being dug each summer, and I think if I keep them along the edges of the beds there will be room for zucchini or whatever and hopefully the extra watering won’t bother the dormant bulbs. I always miss a few anyway, and they do fine so in theory this should work.

So much color

In any case I know I’ll have plenty more tulips next year. These will likely double in number for next year and my friend Kimberly at Cosmos and Cleome will hopefully 🙂 offer me her leftovers again when she ejects her own tulip patch to make way for the season’s next show… I’ll gleefully add them somewhere here to grow on until they’re big enough to bloom again.

An old bulb bed where a few tulips still come up through the grass and weeds. Even with the potager beds packed and in full bloom, a trio of flowers in the weeds is still amazing.

Sorry this post is just the ramblings of a tulip maniac. To make it somewhat useful I guess I should reveal all my secrets about growing tulips so here they are. Wait until frost kills off whatever is in the vegetable bed and remove the dead vines and stakes. Grab a shovel and dig a shallow grave. Dump a reasonable amount of bulbs in and to make yourself feel like you’re putting in some effort, space them somewhat evenly and turn them pointy side up. Fill the grave with the dirt and old tomatoes and rotten peppers and whatever else you were too lazy to cart off to the compost. Cover the beds with a good inch or two of chopped leaves so that no one can see how poorly you prepared the bed. Wait for spring.

I think my reputation is established enough that no one expected the “work” involved here to be anything special. I have plenty of other jobs to kill myself with here so no sense letting the tulip planting have the upper hand, but it surely helps that I love digging them up again to see how well they’ve grown. Tulip flowers are nice enough, but sacks of tulip bulbs curing in the garage must really thrill the dormant prepper in me, and make me feel like I’m more than well prepared for any civilization crumbling tulip-shortage that could happen at any moment. You never know. It’s always good to be prepared.

April in Bloom

Apr21

We had our earliest 90+ degree day ever last week (33C) and I was unimpressed. Daffodils melted and hyacinths fried and the gardener turned on the air conditioning and did nothing in the shade. Three days later he froze standing around at a track meet with a brisk 41F (5C) breeze and the occasional snow flurry. Such are our springs. As usual things are busy and people are probably relieved that photographing snowdrops had to take a back seat to work and trips and home repairs, but I did take a minute Sunday to photograph a few things. Lets start at the end… the end of snowdrop season 😦

Here’s the double snowdrop ‘L.P. Short’ holding on to a last bloom while a sea of Spring Beauties (Claytonia virginica) bring on the next show.

Galanthus ‘Narwhal’ is still hanging on in spite of all kinds of weather and me stepping on him at least once…

Of course the end of snowdrop season is always a sad time, but at least there are plenty of distractions to ease the trauma. Actually as things come on so fast and furious it will be at least another month or two before the reality sinks in, and by then I can start digging a few bulbs and buying a few new ones, and dreaming of next season 😉

I might have added an Epimedium or two over the last few years. Shade tolerant, drought resistant, deer and rabbit resistant, nice all summer… I’ve been avoiding them for a while, but what’s the harm in adding another two or ten? This is ‘Purple something’ since I lost the tag and possibly didn’t write the name down anywhere…

As trees grow, this full sun garden is becoming shady in spots and I kind of like the early flush of spring bloomers.

Some dogtooth violets (Erythronium americanum) a friend gifted me a few years back. I was shocked to see them blooming this year, I thought for sure the cool speckled foliage would be all I’d ever get in this crappy, rooty, dry as a bone all summer, growing location.

From far enough away the somewhat-shaded part of the garden actually looks nice.

Shade is nice, but full sun is still something I treasure most. All kinds of bulbs are now filling in the beds and it’s awesome to see the return of color and growth, even if at times it seems to move along too fast.

The grape hyacinths are absolutely common, and somewhat weedy if not dead-headed, but the blue color is perfect and lasts a while.

For all the treasures I see in the garden, most of the people coming and going from this house don’t mention a thing about the garden. You can imagine my shock then when not one, but two people commented on the ‘pink tropical looking flower growing alongside the porch. Species peonies are nice enough but two people? Honestly I think they’re just messing with me, but when they immediately lost interest upon hearing the blooms only last a week or so, I knew they were authentically interested… even if it was only for a minute…

Peonia daurica by the front porch.

No one mentioned the dandelions, not even the fancy white Japanese version I’ve been pampering along in the front border. I wish it would seed around a little, that would surely draw more attention.

It’s a favorite of the rabbits at least. Taraxacum albidium must have a better flavor than the regular dandelions since I practically have to cage it to keep the bunnies off.

The daffodils might draw attention even if it’s never mentioned by anyone. I need more, and I need to move a few bunches back into full sun since they’re sulking in the shady spots I tucked them into. They’ll bounce back, but I was so proud of myself when I found all that room under the trees along the side of the yard. I guess there was a reason for the empty spaces since apparently nothing really wants to be there including the daffodils.

Narcissus ‘Bravoure’ front and center near the door. It’s very nice and refined and I can’t find a single fault other than I’m not so crazy about it. Maybe it’s too stiff. I really shouldn’t try and find faults.

Narcissus ‘Stella’ aka Kathy’s Sweetheart is not too stiff. She nods and sways and has joyfully twisted petals which fade from cream to white and I’m surprised how she’s grown on me. I was trying to be a show-daff kind of person but I guess I’m not.

This one just showed up. It doesn’t match anything which used to grow here yet I’m pretty sure it had a name at one time and I either never knew it or lost it. It’s a keeper though, I like how the color of the trumpet bleeds into the petals… something which I believe show-daff people frown upon…

Newer, fancier daffs which are not doing as well in the ‘terrace’ as I thought they would. It’s frightening to think how these should also be moved to a better spot.

I don’t remember ‘White Collar’ from last year, but this year he’s living up to the name and I definitely approve. Behind him is ‘Bronzewing’. Bronzewing is again amazing.

To be honest the shaded daffodils escaped the worst of the heat and are still somewhat nice when compared to the fried daffodils in the main beds. But what fries the daffodils grows the tulips, and from here on it’s the tulips which will shine.

Darwin tulips in the front border.

Years ago I took out the double tulips, but I must have missed one and over the years the one bulb has been clumping up nicely. I suspect it’s the tulip ‘Abba’.

Most of the tulips here come and go as I add new ones or accidentally dig up and then divide old ones, but the potager is filled with the tulips I intentionally dig and divide each summer. There are a couple hundred and although I planted them too thickly (entirely because I was too lazy to plant them properly), they still seem to be coming along nicely. There’s no room for lettuce or onions but by the weekend all I’ll care about is how amazing it looks.

More (mostly Darwin) tulips in the vegetable beds. Another warm day and the main show will start.

Honestly the tulip show is nothing when compared to the big shows where bed after bed is filled with a curated display of color echoes and blends, but I like it, and on a beautifully sunny day all the color is just a celebration of spring.

One day I’m telling my sister in law that this is one of the less-interesting, sloppy forms of tulip, and then two days later I think it’s one of the nicest in the garden. ‘Orange Emperor’ has a delicious color and I like the touch of green on a few of the blooms. Thanks Kimberley, I like it!

There is a little bit of a stink hanging over the display. The pear tree is covered in blooms and without a freeze in the forecast I’m anticipating a good deal of pears this summer. Fortunately this ‘Bartlett’ pear doesn’t seem to stink as much as the yucky stench of those Bradford pears planted all over the place. This one only comes on as a wiff here and there, the Bradfords stink up your whole car if you drive by with the windows open.

Plenty of pears to be.

While on the topic of flowering trees, the magnolias were amazing this year, but the heat pushed them over far too quickly. I’ll have to get photos next year of two new ones but for now the new standard magnolia ‘Ann’ is still putting on a great show. New flowers open for a while and the fruity fragrance always wins against the stink of a pear.

‘Ann’ will never be more than a small tree, and that’s a perfect size for this side of the yard.

The side of the yard where ‘Ann’ is planted is somewhat mucky in spring when runoff works its way down from the yard next door and the front of this house, and for a while the spring muck followed by summer drought rejected pretty much everything I planted here, but finally two plantings are doing well. Spring snowflakes (Leucojum vernum) and Snakeshead fritillaria (F. meleagris) rebel against good drainage and don’t mind sitting in water when water sits. Both are actually happy enough to seed around.

Fritillaria meleagris seedlings are blooming here and there below the magnolia and my plan is coming together perfectly except for the fact you don’t notice the purple flowers under the purple magnolia. Hmmm. But at least they’re happy 😉

Plenty of things don’t work out to plan here, and plenty more things don’t work out without a plan so miss-colored fritillaria are one more thing which needs moving but will probably stay put for decades. I’m fine with that. The thing or two which do work out keep me happy enough and for the next couple weeks I’ll be swimming in tulips and that’s more than plenty.

A mess of tulips

I hope your spring is also filled with plenty. Have a great weekend!

Cooler

Mar21

We missed most of the snow, but in general it was cool here last week. In a fit of mid-March optimism I drug a few of the hardiest things out of the garage and onto the driveway for a little sun and fresh air and then forgot about them for a few days. Things got cooler over the weekend with a Friday night low around 25F (-4C) and I had my concerns for the rosemary, Fatsia, and potted Dracaena, but in the light of the next morning they didn’t look too bad. Of course I left them out for the next night as well, with similar temperatures, because like a small child I’ll try and get away with it for as often as I can until things backfire. Some people only learn things the hard way.

A spring shower and March sunshine have brought on the big dutch crocus (Crocus vernum ‘Pickwick’). The rabbits only nibbled a few of the blooms, but they’ll be back soon enough to finish them off.

In spite of two cold nights, the calendar and stars both say today is the first day of spring, and I’m happy the heavens have finally caught up to where I’ve already been for quite a few weeks. It’s exciting to know that spring has been given its official recognition for the new year but also sad to think that some of the most exciting highlights of the year have already passed. Next week promises warmer weather and with it the peak of the snowdrop season and then the fading away while other things step up for their moment. Already the witch hazel are dropping their petals and the winter aconite are on their way to setting seed and I’m almost missing those chilly afternoons shuffling around the garden looking for the first sprouts.

In a nook shaded by the fence, the last of the winter aconite is holding on to bloom. Seed pods will come next, ripe seed thereafter, and soon I’ll be scattering a new crop of flowers into the next patch of garden.

I think this gardener is feeling a bit of a crash following the abundance of snowdrops this spring. They’re still amazing and a few late ones are just starting and trust me I spend more time than I should soaking them in, but maybe I’ll need some help coming off the high this year.

‘Melanie Broughton’ is just one of the many late forms which supply perfect flowers once the earlier sorts begin to look tired. Maybe I need a late bed strictly devoted to these kinds so they’re all perfectly perfect together. Surely the garden can handle one more snowdrop bed?

Maybe daffodils can be my methadone. In spite of this weekend’s turn to cold the first daffodils are just a few degrees of sunshine short of opening, and you can trust I have my eye on them.

New waterlily shoots frozen into the night’s ice. I’m continuously amazed that soft things like fresh lilypads and tiny things like fresh duckweed can survive a solid freeze.

Oops. One thing which I didn’t have my eyes on were the four pots of daylily seedlings which were put out into the coldframe last week. Daylilies are hardy enough plants, but for seedlings to come out from a cozy winter under the growlights and face a freezing cold night (or two since what’s done is done), might have been more than they should have to handle.

Kinda mushy and wilted, the frozen daylily seedlings will hopefully survive to enjoy spring. Hopefully.

Generally if things freeze off I’m quite quick to write them off and move on, since there’s never a shortage of new seedlings and divisions and gifts and purchases waiting to find a home, but the frozen daylily seedlings could really be a setback to the future of the farm. I was counting on these to provide the 2025 introductions which would be unveiled when I put out my first daylily catalogue. Golly. This really does throw a wrench into things.

You can’t look at snowdrops all day, so Saturday I decided to regrade the entire construction area. The wife kindly pointed out that working on closets would be a better use of my time, considering a machine could do this in a day, but God forbid I have to join a gym to work off my winter fat.

So moving a couple tons of rocky fill did help ease the stress of the ups and downs which come with building a world quality daylily farm, but the even better part to all the hard labour was filling in a few more square feet of the low spot which haunts me in the back of the yard. I feel like the Dutch must have felt when they reclaimed their land from the sea. Every square foot of flat ground holds the potential of a new planting area, and perhaps in their honor I should plant it all to tulips one year, just in case the daylily farm doesn’t keep me busy enough.

The lowest areas back here were perhaps three feet below where I’d like them to be, so into the dip went all kinds of stone and mortar debris, now to be topped off with a foot or so of rocky dirt/fill.

I’m estimating this job should be finished up somewhere around late 2027, assuming I don’t end up in the hospital first. Hmmm. Actually I’m surprised that didn’t come up in addition to the talk of closets, and honestly don’t know if I should be flattered or insulted by that. In another year I’ll be closer to 60 than 50 so…

In the last few days tulips have started to sprout in the potager beds. There will be no room for cabbages, but three or four heads of cabbage didn’t stand a chance against armloads of tulips.

Well that’s not the direction I had planned for this post. It’s the first day of official spring and as always I’ll be gardening as if I’ll live to be 120. In my opinion it’s the only option since imagine planning for a bucket-kicking at 90 and then sticking around for another 30! That’s a long time to regret the unplanted acorn.

May I say Amazing?

May27

As we approach the end of May I’m pretty sure things couldn’t be better. There was a moment (actually quite a few) when I was sitting in the backyard, looked about and thought to myself, ‘wow, this is friggin awesome’. It wasn’t just one thing or another, it was the warm breeze, the scent of iris blooms, birds chirping, the wind rustling fresh foliage, flowers here and there, it was all that and it just feels great after months of seemingly endless cold.

Three warm days and a few rain showers ended tulip season and moved the garden into it’s blue phase with iris and aquilegia.

To be completely honest there were a few days in there when the heat was almost bad enough to say something mildly bad about too much heat, but then a quick sit in the shade fixed things. With enough rain and sun you can almost hear things growing, and I like that.

When they were bulldozing the coal wastelands to build the industrial park behind our house I came across and saved two columbine plants (Aquilegia vulgaris) by digging and bringing them into the garden. Ten years later they’ve self-sown everywhere, creating a nice blue haze.

There used to be a lull in flowers between the last tulips and first iris and roses, but by carefully buying too many plants each year for the last few years I’ve ended up filling that gap. I shall try to keep up that effort and see what else wonderful results from overplanting. Maybe it’s the secret to thicker hair or longer life, you never know, better to err on the side of caution since I think I saw something once about a lack of new plants being linked to excessive weight gain and cognitive decline. Be careful is all I’m saying.

The yellow of King’s Spear (Asphodeline lutea) is back after a couple years of too much rabbit nibbling and columbine crowding. I like the spikes of bloom and will try and give it a little more space again.

This talk of new plants has me a little worried because work and a pile of mulch to spread has kept me too busy for my usual nursery runs. I did manage to finish off the front yard mulching, but after bailing out eight or nine bucket of water out of the basement Saturday I told my contractor he owed me another load of mulch. He agreed. A new roof is nice, but when all the water is now directed to a spot just above the basement door, and the gutter is missing, and you can see water flowing into the house it can be discouraging. Good thing mulch makes me happy.

All the early corydalis and scillas are yellowed and gone and with new mulch spread it looks almost suburbian neat in this garden.

Plenty of other things make me happy as well, and since many of the plenty are things which bloom in May, even the latest round of water in the house can’t dampen my spirits.

Amsonia hubrichtii is care-free in full sun and only needs a wack back to half it’s height in June to keep it from sprawling everywhere.

Even though the rain doesn’t need to fall in downpours of one or two inches it’s still worth it to have a green lawn in May rather than the beginning of drought. Everything seems happier after a good soak, provided there’s some sun and warmth afterwards… rather than endless damp and grey.

With all the other blue a new blue lupine was probably unnecessary, but I wanted something to go with the red one… and of course now the red one’s not flowering…

You may be wondering how the construction is going if all this rain and water is still getting into the house, and I wish I could say we’re almost there, but we’re not. Things are crawling along but with a contractor who is often a one or two man show, crawling is as good as it gets. Good thing we like him and it’s always (eventually) a job well done 🙂

With much of this end of the border bulldozed down, the weeping white spruce (Picea glauca pendula) has a chance to get the space he deserves. Maybe the fresh mulch will keep the bulldozer from coming back!

So bit by bit I try to bring back the parts of the garden ‘touched’ by construction. Areas are looking better but the pond was one spot I’d given up on. There are large rocks and nearly a foot of dirt which have fallen in, but just last week everything changed. I heard frogs singing, and then I heard more. In the muddy, murky waters I see many frog eggs and suspect this corner of PA will soon see a tree frog population explosion. I’m already trying to figure out what I can feed them with since I can’t imagine there’s enough whatever in this pond to feed so many future tadpoles.

There are hundreds of frog eggs in here, and those are just the surface ones which I can easily see!

So if all goes well this summer shall again see an abundance of baby gray tree frogs entering the garden. Perhaps that will make up for the missing garter snakes.

The stone wall is about as good as it gets. In a moment of brilliance all the potted succulents ended up on top of the wall rather than on the deck steps. I think I like it but it’s hard to level a pot on such ramshackle construction.

For all the rocks which came up out of the construction hole, I’m a little disappointed by how short a rock wall I was able to build. People who garden on rocky sites are likely rolling their eyes and saying we have plenty, come get a few, but nearly all my rocks are covered by shale and fill and would require a little quarrying to get to them. Hmmm. I’ve heard of people who have done as much and according to my book, if someone else has tried it maybe it’s not so crazy. Maybe I could start a ‘small backhoe campaign’ and start talking about backhoes enough that eventually someone will say ‘just get the stupid thing if that will shut you up’. That could be fun 🙂

The new wall makes a nice divider between the lawn and the meadow… otherwise known as where I mow regularly and where I don’t…

Having a backhoe BEFORE I moved several tons of rock by hand would have been a smarter move, but if the early settlers were able to clear a field by hand and build miles of wall I think I should be able to handle a few feet.

The succulents will spend all summer out here, unwatered for the most part and maybe here and there a splash of liquid fertilizer will land in their pots. Also maybe I’ll pot up another dozen or so other succulents I happen to have laying around. If 20 pots look nice wouldn’t 30 look nicer?

So what other silliness has been going on around here… the entire winter garden is out of the house but bags of canna roots and pots of caladium corms are still waiting their turn. Many of the deck planters have been planted and overall it’s nearly all overwintered things and not much new. That’s good for the budget but at the moment the repotted mandevilla vine looks like a whole lot of dead, and not quite the highlight of any summer display, so maybe it will still be a few weeks before I share photos of that.

The potager is remarkably under control for May. Garlic and onions are growing, tomatoes have been planted, and I suspect there’s another bunny nest in the tulips. Baby bunnies are too cute to resent. I will tell them to keep away from the lettuce.

In some parts of the garden I think I’m overcompensating for the construction destruction. The guilt of bulldozed and buried plants has me trying to make other areas extra-neat as I try to balance those out with areas I’ve abandoned.

btw chives (Allium schoenoprasum) might be my latest, latest, latest obsession. Here’s pink ‘Forescate’ with white ‘Album’ behind. I might have a lead on a darker variety and when I pair those with the regular lavender sort I think it will be quite nice. Oddly I can’t rememebr the last time I ate a chive, but whatever.

Speaking of abandoned areas, the snowdrop beds are all on that list. Maybe I’ll weed and divide things this summer, or maybe not. These days I can call it a wild garden and don’t think anyone will judge me too harshly, plus it’s always going to be much more interesting than mulchbeds and lawn, even though 90% of my neighbors would much prefer mulchbeds and lawn rather than the excessive plantings which find their home here (the other 10% are undecided).

Weeds amongst the snowdrops. A few nice things but I really need to remove the mugwort and powerwash that birch trunk!

Honestly sometimes I’m undecided if all these questionable plants and sweaty labor are changing things here for the better, but when the tadpoles come I will know they are. Actually every new thing which comes up has me convinced it’s all for the better… except maybe poison ivy seedlings. I can do without those.

Enjoy these last days of May, they pass far too quickly!

Bragging Again

May7

The weather has finally warmed up enough here to get things growing, and as usual it’s the tulips and daffodils which are my absolute favorites. They’re not at all subtle and I think that’s needed in order to distract from the raw construction of other parts of the garden.

The border along the street is looking good with a nice show of returning tulips. Some have been in place for over five years and are way overdue for dividing.

Tulips and daffodils are a weakness of mine and it may surprise some that I’ve been on a strict diet for the last two or three years and haven’t allowed myself to buy any new bulbs until I take better care of what’s here. Crowded clumps need dividing in order to show off best and in the case of tulips a string of late freezes and excessively damp springs have brought on some serious plagues of tulip fire botrytis. Fortunately it only takes a few nice flowers in order for me to completely ignore a thousand other issues!

‘Marit’ might be in the top five of favorite tulips. The colors, shape, and size are just amazing to my eye.

This year drier weather has also been helpful in keeping the botrytis down. Between that and some Neem oil spraying last spring things are looking much improved this spring. I’m also ruthlessly ripping out infected shoots and thinning the foliage on still overcrowded clumps. We will see what ‘thinning the foliage’ does to next year’s flowers since obviously the bulbs need the foliage to grow new bulbs, but a few less bulbs might not be the worst thing either.

I’m not sure you can tell that these tulips have been thinned. The one clump of orange was missed, but the others were all dug in late May(?) far earlier than they should have been, and immediately replanted after pulling off and tossing all the smaller bulbs. I’m hoping the show next spring is again solid with color.

I’m pretty sure only the gardener will notice if there are a ‘few less’ bulbs next year. Exponential growth means a hundred tulips can become three hundred in just a year, so better to revel in the luxury of me doing the thinning rather than disease or *gulp* deer or other vermin doing it for me. Thank goodness the deer still avoid my garden.

An overcrowded daffodil patch. Sadly this is a newer replant where I thought I was leaving room, but really wasn’t as I tried to pack too many bulbs into too small a bed…

At least deer don’t eat daffodils. Someday the backup plan might be daffodils and a fenced in potager if worse comes to worst.

An airy little ‘Firebird’.

I don’t know if anyone remembers but ‘The Purge’ took place two springs ago, and daffodils were downsized to just under 150 varieties and that still sounds generous, but I miss them.

‘Tahiti’ will never be downsized. Even as a double in a garden where doubles are under-appreciated, it’s a favorite.

A new bed of daffodils would likely help. I think it’s worth a shot at least 😉

‘Coral Light’ also made the cut and looks excellent with some room to show off. If only I could do more of this planting-with-reasonable-spacing thing I think I’d be alright and things would look much better.

Where would this bed go? Who knows but it would probably involve less lawn and that’s also a good thing… unless someone wants a badminton net strung up and doesn’t want to avoid jumping over daffodil clumps…

The bulbs of ‘Mrs R O Backhouse’ did not look great after the purge, and I was worried, but many of these older varieties bounce back quickly.

‘The Purge’ reached a highpoint two years ago during the potager rebuild, and a couple daffodil plantings had to make way for the construction of raised beds. Sadly since then I’ve found that I don’t like the way the daffodils look in the raised beds, so that’s a new space problem, and even worse I love growing tulips in the raised beds. The digging and replanting seems to really help with controlling the tulip fire botrytis and I can spend hours each week just going back and forth looking to see how much they’ve grown each day, and what new surprise has opened up. Sometimes I really have to wonder where they come from when it’s a flower I don’t remember ever planting or it’s one I haven’t seen in years!

I tried to keep two beds open for tomatoes, beans, and zucchini plantings this month. Next year all bets are off and the whole thing might be tulips.

Actually here’s a confession. Last fall I did add 10 new bulbs of ‘Shirley’ and ‘Pink Impression’, so this bulb diet I’m on isn’t all abstinence and cutting back. Maybe it should have been though, since both varieties were mislabeled.

This is not the tulip ‘Shirley’ but still nice, and for a clearance bulb I can’t complain. The real ‘Shirley’ has more of an inky purple stain that spreads down from the edges as the flower ages, and of course I still need to get that one again… and keep this one now…

A friend with excellent taste in tulips pulls hers each year after bloom and usually I say no thanks, but this year I already put in a save request. I’m also looking through bulb catalogs. I’m also excited about how fat and vigorous this year’s crop of bulbs should be. I fear ‘The Purge’ shall be followed by ‘The Splurge’ and tomatoes will end up in pots on the deck next year… and I’m 100% fine with that! -until someone else here overrules me 😉

The view from my in-potager seating area. When the sun shines and the flowers open wide there’s not much getting done around here.

Usually the saved bulbs end up as mixes since it’s (1) easier and (2) it’s easier. Plus the gardener always misses a bunch of bulbs when digging, stray bulbs get dropped and returned to the wrong box, and the gardener is a little disorganized in general. He tries though. A solid patch of his favorite is always worth marking and digging separately.

I think this streaked orange is ‘Beauty of Apeldoorn’ and I wouldn’t mind a solid bunch of it, as well as the yellow behind which might be ‘Big Smile’ which is plain and yellow, and I have plenty of yellow, but it’s also excellent and I love it.

Don’t worry, there’s a good chance none of that will ever happen. Just getting the bulbs dug will be work enough and trust me the gardener isn’t one to go out looking for extra work.

Most of the tulips here come from generic Darwin Hybrid mixes, and often they turn out to be something else, but I believe the large reddish orange with yellow edges is the Darwin hybrid ‘Apledoorn Elite’ and it makes up a big part of the mix.

I bet a few complementary perennials would also look nice, but all we’ve got is purple deadnettle and a few self-sown clumps of bleeding hearts. There’s much to be said for careful weeding.

One year bleeding heart seed somehow ended up in the compost and they came up all over. Works for me I said!

Enough with the tulips, just one last photo on how much they multiply. I came across this picture from two years ago of all the ones which were dug and saved during the potager upheaval.

The potager tulips all descend from these few saved bunches. A few of the reds were added later as leftovers from the planters out front, but the nerd in me sees the baby pictures of ‘Red Emperor’ and ‘Apledoorn Elite’ just waiting to go back into the ground and explode!

Ok, one last confession. I may have mentioned I did buy a few new daffodils last fall since I had been so good during ‘The Purge’ and made so many adult decisions about how many was enough and how many was too much. They were all one or two bulb purchases from either QDaffs or PHS daffs and were more meant to support small growers and importers, and entirely not because I really needed them… but that sham is now falling apart. I was either sent more bulbs than I ordered or the quality was so obscenely excellent that one bulb really amounted to three normal bulbs, and now there are enough and they’re so awesome that more would be even better. Oh the cruelty of it all.

An older variety, ‘Bernardino’ with a newer variety, ‘Hyperbole’ behind it. Both are outstanding.

Fortunately I haven’t clicked on any new orders. Actually I think it’s downright irresponsible to even allow us to order more daffs while it’s still peak season here, and I kind of feel like I’m being targeted for my weaknesses… but on second thought I may be just fine with that.

‘Red Passion’ in front with ‘Rocoza’ behind. To a daffodilista that’s what red looks like, just like peach is often called pink, but whatever, I always enjoy the enthusiasm of the plant-obsessed.

So we will see if anything new is ordered. I’m leaning towards responsibility and frugality, and more adult decisions which consider available space and appropriate choices, but when you come home from work on a Friday excited for the weekend only to find it’s raining inside the bathroom nearly as much as outside, your resolve weakens. Plus there’s always that gardening budget just bursting with revenue from the new plant tax. Construction is still as expensive as ever but when this genius decided to put a plant tax on all building costs it’s been a huge windfall for my plant budget. This must be how the big oil companies feel when gas prices surge and then stay there… except that’s also my money vanishing… and it’s surely not being spent on plants…

In any case have a great weekend. It’s still raining here (although the extra shower in the bathroom has stopped) but at least the rain has kept me from staring at flowers all morning. Enjoy!

Spring?

Apr27

Last Sunday was fantastic. There was sunshine and warmth, and coffee on the porch, and then here was a nice stroll to look at plants. Then there was more looking and some sitting and then a little more looking. I believe things were actually growing as I watched and that’s a nice change from the chilly standstill that the last few days have had us at… and the snow… but nearly all of that melted when the warmer weather rolled in. Eventually I even did a little work!

This spring has been good for the hellebores… except I probably have too many and I probably have even more seedlings coming along so I probably should open up a few new spots and not plant other things there since I’m opening them up for future hellebore seedlings…

I’ve been a little down on the garden due to gloomy weather and construction debris, but just a couple hours of short sleeve gardening with spring flowers opening had me flying high again. My weedy, disheveled potager with a few tulips close to opening had me imagining the grandeur of Keukenhof right here in my own backyard, but now the reality of another gloomy day has brought me back down to earth. I think it will be nice enough, but things could still use a bit of work here.

Anemone x lipsiensis is a cute little spring bloomer. I bought a little root the same year a friend gave me a piece and I assumed they’d be the same thing but they’re not. Now I need to decide if the smaller, paler clone on the left is different enough from the one on the right to bother separating.

I think a breakthrough was finally making a move on the poor little boxwood hedge which was upended when construction fill had to be shuttled from the foundation hole to the low spot in the back of the yard. My jelly ‘topsoil’ was squeezed to the side by the weight of the backhoe, and when it squished over it took the hedge with it. Part of me wanted to rip it out and rethink things but then the other part decided it would be worth digging out and straightening up. So… the hedge along the potager will be dug and returned to its upright position.

My sad and abused boxwood hedge. All winter it’s been nearly pushed over and I’ve been back and forth on what to do.

The hedge across from it is a different story. It’s also riding a wave of squishy topsoil and I think that wave is about to crash.

The even sadder and more abused neighboring boxwood hedge. Maybe it’s time to say goodbye.

Come to think of it I’m not all that happy with the swingset in the middle of the yard anymore either. The kids don’t use it all that much and when they do they’re not toddlers I need to keep an eye on, rather they’re teens who wouldn’t mind hiding with their friends somewhere off to the side. Hmmmm. And don’t even get me started on the trampoline.

Construction has not been kind to the pond. It’s a muddy mess which fills with runoff, but the waterlily is returning and I see duckweed bits floating about so all is not dead.

Maybe changes are afoot. It’s not surprising that poorly planned projects of five and ten years ago need updating, and the sad truth will be that their replacements will likely be just as hasty and poorly planned. Obviously I’m one of those people who needs to learn everything the hard way.

A pile of rocks might as well become a wall so as to not look so much like a pile of save-them-somewhere rocks.

Don’t think that my whole beautiful weekend was filled with the joys of stone moving and hedge lifting, there was also the fun moment when a small jackhammer showed up so that “if I wanted to start taking out the concrete patio section and digging out new basement stairs” I could. Lucky me!

Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica) can be floppy and messy and rapidly die down when the weather gets warm, but I’m determined to get a few settled into the garden.

So even when my day of rest was topped off with three hours of jack hammering and digging I still thought it was a fantastic weekend. The weather was beautiful and I even snuck in a quick hike and garden center run with the daughter. She got it into her head to trim Grandma’s spiral evergreens, pull weeds, and also wanted to plant a few flowers, so needless to say I was thrilled to hear her speaking my language and found the time to look at plants with her 😉

‘Jetfire’ is a nice little daffodil that looks all yellow most years… until a cold spring comes our way. Then the trumpet burns orange just like it likely does every year in more reliably dismal climates.

All this is still a lot of raw construction talk and torn up earth, so hopefully the next batch of photos will be more pleasing and flowerful. I think it will be. The daffodils are beginning and with tulips right behind them I’ll be thrilled, even if the sun is lost and gloomy weather returns. You can’t hold spring back forever.

This year the yellow trumpet daffodil ‘Tweety Bird’ holds the record for longest bloom. A full month after first opening, it still looks exceptional, and it doesn’t hurt that this small trumpet flower form might be my very favorite daffodil form.

‘High Society’ just barely missed the bulldozer blade. It’s such a highly regarded, good grower, and I can’t think of a single reason to justify my luke-warm opinion of this plant.

Hope the garden did well for you this weekend. I feel recharged and can’t wait to get back out there, especially if it’s heavier on the sit and look side than it is jack hammering and stone hauling 😉

Have a great week!

sorta like suburbia

more than you ever wanted to know about my garden

Tag Archives: spring