In the Garden: April 2008 Archives

I've had a full day, today. I can recall as a child that I thought Sunday was a lazy day, but it's been a long time since I've frittered away a Sunday.

The CPA's assistant, who is also a CPA, is going to visit us tomorrow to help me with some accounting problems. I've been trying to clear things off my desk, and make a list of all that I need to have her oversee. I still have a stack of filing (don't I always), but I managed to clear the important things off my list, and I can get to the filing and a few less important things tomorrow morning.

My next big block of work was centered on the herb garden. It seems that when I have the time to work in the gardens the weather is foul, and when the weather is gorgeous, I have too much work that must be completed inside! However, we managed to get one of those rare spring days when the weather was beautiful, and I could get out to enjoy the gardens.

I started by pruning back the oregano, which took the largest part of my gardening time. I have six or eight mounds of oregano, enough to supply a small town, and I followed the current thinking and let the superstructure of the plants remain in place over the winter. The oregano is leafing out. If I had waited much longer to prune, I wouldn't have been able to avoid taking some of the new growth. I took a picture before I started. I'll try to get one of the pruned plants, and one a week later. You won't be able to tell it's been pruned by next weekend.

I cleaned out part of the chat walkway today. I left a few volunteer Shasta daisies, and some lamb's ears and thyme, but I pulled up the garlic chives that have spread. If you don't get those chives before they establish themselves, you have to dig to the other side of the world to get them out!

As I was working a bird sitting above my head started calling. I have NO idea what kind of bird I was listening to. For all my musical training, I find myself unable to read the call charts in the bird books, or describe to someone what the call sounded like. What was interesting about this particular call was that half-way through a bird across the grove picked up the call and imitated it. I don't know if the birds were looking for mates, or if they were trying to establish territory, but the timing of the repeat, and the pitch of the repeat were perfect!

I planted three Italian Flat-leaved parsleys earlier this week, and a bunny or a deer had a fine meal one night! There are still some leaves, and I'm fairly sure that the plants will come back. However, when I plant the spinach this week, I'll surround it with circles of hardware cloth!

It was a joy to be out today. I don't work as fast or as long as I once did, but I probably enjoy my time in the gardens even more.

As I sit here at my computer, I can see the star magnolia just outside the window, and it has just begun to open. All it took was a little consistent warmth. The daffodils along the east side of the house are doing well, and I can see oriental poppy greens at the turn of the sidewalk. The short, scruffy Darwin tulips are open, too.

The scilla or squill that I wrote about earlier is a mass of tiny blue flowers against a green background, and the iris and day lilies are coming along nicely.

The only off note in the news is that the forsythia blooms look spotty. Perhaps I need to give it a little more time. I know that it blooms after the magnolia has opened, so perhaps I'm just seeing the early color, and the rest of the bloom is yet to come. This is a Lynwood Gold variety which has not been pruned, so it has the traditional arch to the canes.

Sunday, I'll have to go out to check the shrub rose to see if there are any signs of new growth since we pruned so hard, and I want to check the peonies to see if there are any signs of starts coming through the dirt.

I love this part of the year. There's so much to watch for!

As I've run errands the past few days, I've been where plants have been for sale, and I simply couldn't resist making a few purchases. Elegante Mother can't pass up a pansy in the spring, so we had 29 plants waiting for some dirt.

Yesterday, while we were out, I picked up potting soil so I'd be ready when I had a few minutes, to get some of those plants into the dirt. We have a large coir-edged basket at the front of the house, and I filled it with gerbera daisies, a purple hyacinth, and purple petunias. I may change that planting during the summer, but I needed to see some color at the front of the house.

I alternated yellow and purple pansies in a wrought iron basket lined with coir, too.

I had two lavenders, two rosemarys and three Italian flat-leafed parsleys to plant. I had just enough time to get the parsley into the herb bed last night before I HAD to start dinner. As it was, I probably should have waited for this morning to plant them, but I was on a roll! *G* It's going to rain later today, and should rain through Saturday morning, so I won't have a lot of chance to work outside for a couple of days.

Dear Husband suggested that I look into the Haz-Mat suits made of Tyvek for weeding where I suspect I'll find poison ivy. That's not a bad idea at all! I don't have my half sleeves made yet to cover below my wrists when I'm in the gardens. Maybe that will be my rainy day chore on Saturday morning.

It was in the upper sixties today. It might have even hit 70. As I went out to call in Edward Scissorhands, I noticed that the daffodils along the east wall of the house have begun to bloom, and I can see the heads of the lily plants poking out of the earth.

Somewhere back in my archives there is an entry or twelve on Scilla, a tiny blue flowered bulb that blooms early in the season. Last week I noticed a sea of thin green leaves around the base of one of the trees in the grove, and today the flowers had opened. Here's a good picture of scilla thanks to the University of Illinois.

I went back through my archives, and was interested to see that the squill bloomed much earlier in some years than others. This must have been a tough winter, with all the snow and cold.

And, we have at least one Rufous-Sided Towhee! Welcome back little bird!

Okay, this morning I saw the first of the goldfinches to return, and this weekend I got my first case of poison ivy for this year. That makes it official. Spring has sprung!

You know....the WARM, SUNNY, DRY weekend that lets us know that it's not going to be winter forever. I won't be so rash as to say that spring has finally arrived, but the weather this week was exceptional, and I spent part of each day in the gardens, clearing off the spent plants and even pulling up crabgrass and poison ivy stems.

When your nose is within a foot of the ground you see all sort of things that you might otherwise miss. I realized that the dead stems of the purple fountain grass were covering a pod of daffodils and tulips, so I started there on Saturday morning, digging up the dead annual. It was covering some of my favorite daffodils, the Ice Follies, which are usually the first to bloom. This year they will loose the race to the traditional daffodils that are planted along the front of the house.

I saw fever few, sweet woodruff, crocus, the tips of Dutch iris leaves, a volunteer vinca that I should exterminate, and tons of iris. I have one pod of iris that is next to a downspout and I can see that I'll have to move them this year. There are four other HUGE pods of iris that will have to be shifted this year. I meant to get to them last year, and it just didn't get done. If I wait any longer, they'll die off for lack of good soil and overcrowding.

I didn't get everything trimmed, but I made a good start. I can tell that I'm not a kid any more. I can't work for twelve hours on my hands and knees and still get up and walk away. I need to be more careful with mulch to keep weeding down.

Dear Husband, super guy that he is, took a little time away from varnishing the boat to prune the old shrub rose for me. Following information from Bogie, he cut it back severely. This rose blooms on new canes, so we are encouraging it to put up new canes, while we get rid of the brambles. I hope it makes it. This was one of the plants growing on the grounds when we bought the lot 19 years ago.

Each day that is dry, I hope to put a little time into the gardens so that I don't have to devote entire weekends to weeding. I'm SO glad we had warm weather. It felt as though I'd been given a treat after a difficult week, and it was lovely to have some time outside. And, YES.....I wore a hat! *G*