I’ve seen egrets this week! Or, maybe I’ve seen the same egret more than once. He/She must be the scout to see if our weather is ready for the migration! lol Now, I’m watching for the herons. They are harder to see because of their smoky gray color, and how thin they are. If you are not seeing a side view of those birds, you might miss them!
Spring is FINALLY showing up!
I asked the man who has helped with some of our landscaping to fill my veggie beds with a mix of compost and dirt. I thought it would be delivered about three weeks ago, and was getting ready to call to find out what had happened. Dear Husband pointed out that it had been delivered yesterday. I have seeds to plant! I’ll have to pass on the spinach until this fall, but I can get other things in, soon!
Tomorrow the Arr!! goes into Lake Michigan. Dear Husband is going to come home tomorrow night. He says that it’s a bit too cool to sleep over on an unheated boat. He’ll go back Sunday to get things squared away, and I’ll spend the day piecing quilts!
Egrets, the Arr!!, seeds and quilting. It’s Spring.
Category Archives: In the Garden
It’s Green!
Well, it’s greening up! The honeysuckle shrubs are leafing out. My chives are full, bushy clumps of green, and the grass is mostly green.
Easter was so late this year that my family has FINALLY had the chance to see the drifts of daffodils all across the lot. I created a cutting area years ago when I replanted two groups of daffodils to give them more space to branch out. I must have at least a dozen varieties of daffodils, perhaps more. I sent one of my nieces out to clip daffodils for an arrangement in the kitchen, and she chose tall ones and short ones, white ones and yellow ones, single and doubles, to make a beautiful bouquet. One pod of tulips were open and this week more will open as we loose some of the early daffodils. This cold weather has made a huge difference in the length of display. While I’d like a little more sunshine and just a few more degrees of heat, it was wonderful for my family to finally get to see what I’ve been bragging about all these years.
As for the green, I’ve noticed that the weeds are pretty healthy, too. I have perennial thistles in my front sidewalk garden. I pulled a lot of them, but you know they are just going to come back. If it ever stops raining, I may try some weed killer on them. Perhaps something systemic will keep them from coming back.
Coming soon: tulips, iris, lilacs and peonies!!! I’ve cleared everything off my camera so I can take more pictures, and I’ll share some of them with you.
Happy Spring!
Spring???
It’s supposed to be Spring, but this is the oddest weather I can remember having in April. The really good side to all of this is that the cooler weather is allowing the bloom on the daffodils, tulips, forsythia and star magnolia to last unusually long.
Dear Husband came home around 4:00. I was watching Mr. and Mrs. Mallard out the kitchen window. The change in the amount of greenery, and the shades of greenery between noon and 4:00 was astonishing! We had a chilly, rainy day, but the grass, the honeysuckle bushes, daylilies, chives and everything else in the herb garden just seemed to be jumping out of the ground, shaking off winter and embracing a new season!
I took the bows off the evergreen (or not so green) wreaths that had been stored in the garage during the last month or two. I save these bows from year to year and hadn’t gotten around to storing them. That paved the way to move wood from the wagon so that we could have a fire after dinner tonight. It was lovely, warm and inviting. I have enough wood left to repeat the fire tomorrow. Actually, I may refill the wagon and have a fire every night of the coming week, since it’s supposed to remain in the fifties all week long.
I hope we get a break in the stormy weather tomorrow. I’d like to take pictures of the daffodils at the front of the house. I thought I’d put together a book of pictures of the gardens so that I can remember what blooms and where it blooms. Like my mother, I seem to always want to plant something where something else already lives.
I hope you all have a great weekend!
Weeds!
I weeded one of the raised veggie beds today. I don’t know the name of the weed that was trying to take it over. It might be Creeping Charlie, but I’m not sure of that. This weed forms mounds of leaves in a shape that is rather like half of a ball. The leaves are a medium green, medium sized, rounded and very gently indented on the edges. The weed has a taproot that will probably come out in China by August. It was well developed and it’s only early April. I’m going to have compost added to the veggie beds this year, and it would have been a mistake just to pour the compost over these plants. I’m sure they would have found a way to push through it. It was easy to weed them from the friable compost/soil in the raised bed, but that tap root would be a killer to deal with in our clay soil.
I’ll have to ask my sister when she returns at Easter to tell me if the plant that I’m trying to eradicate is Creeping Charlie.
Favorite Things
Tulips, and crocus, and snow bells a-rising…..
Daffodils are making lots of headway, and I can see chives from the kitchen windows. The oregano was greening up under the stalks that had wintered over. I can see the lamb’s ears beginning to shape up. They’re not just a mound of sad-looking leaves any longer.
I planted six specimen plants under one of the front windows, and I can see two small plants greening up. Unfortunately, I can’t recall just which plants they might be. I know there’s foxglove and phlox but I don’t think these little plants are either of those. I’ll have to wait for bloom and mark them.
The ox-eye daisies that I have been ripping out of my flower beds are coming back, especially where they are growing among old iris. I didn’t want to sacrifice the iris just to pull out the daisies, but their time may be coming!
The iris have very nice new leaf starts on them. I need to walk down the driveway to see if the new iris I planted have made it through the winter. It would be a good time to check on the peonies, too.
I have a mound of mulch that I want to spread over the gardens, and I should get some Preen out there where I don’t intend to plant seeds.
I love Spring!
Yippeeeee!!!
The daffodils are coming up!!
As I was coming up the driveway yesterday, I could see a stiff stand of leaves about two inches tall in the bed at the front of the house. Today, I stepped out to check on them, and could see that pods of daffodils are up all along the face of the house. YES!!
Last week, as I fed the birds, I could see that the oregano was greening up. No doubt the other herbs will make a showing, especially tomorrow when it is supposed to be 44 degrees.
This little bit of greening is just the start of a rush that will come during the next month, but it’s always the best. It confirms that spring is coming, that things will renew, and that there is hope that the cycle of our days will continue as expected.
I think I’ll spend a little time with the White Flower Farm catalog, dreaming of just how beautiful the grounds could be.
I’m SUCH a happy camper!
At least 34″
The amaryllis is at least 34″ tall, but since I last wrote about it, there is another bud stalk coming up, and there are at least four leaves. The longest leaf is about eight inches long, the others are just starting to come up.
The bud on the tall stalk is just beginning to open. I noticed a slit on the outer shell, and you can see the tips of the flowers within.
Perhaps most people are not as interested in how an amaryllis grows, but it reminds me of my father. The last year or so of his life, I lived in Missouri in a cabin on my parent’s property. I worked for my Dad, and ate meals with them. Dad had built a rustic fireplace in the dining room and that particular year, Mother was growing an amaryllis. Dad’s chair at the head of the table had him facing the fireplace, and as the amaryllis grew, he kept track of its height by measuring it against the stones of the fireplace. We received a daily report, and it created a sense of anticipation as the stalk grew taller and taller.
I’d forgotten how tall this particular amaryllis was. It might have skipped a season of bloom, or perhaps I was just too busy last year to make a mental note about it’s growth. My Mother would be thrilled to see it blooming again. I’m sure she would encourage me to take pictures and print them out for her. She truly loved these flowers.
I’m blessed that such simple things bring good memories.
31″ going on…..
I mentioned in an earlier entry that I have an amaryllis that I was going to pitch out that decided to bloom. I moved it out into the sunlight and started watering it again, and it has grown at a phenomenal rate!
There’s a stalk, with a bud at the top, and now two leaves have pushed their way out of the bulb. This morning I measured the stalk and it topped out at about 30 inches. This evening, just out of curiosity, I checked it again, and it’s a tad over 31 inches. I think the growth of the stalk is slowing down and we may see the bud begin to develop.
I hope it it one of those gorgeous white flowers with the pink stripes down the center of each petal. Pictures to follow!
Amaryllis
I have an Amaryllis that is growing a bloom stalk! I was going to throw it away, but surfed on amaryllis care and decided that I might try for one more set of blooms on my four pots of amaryllis.
This particular plant lost it’s last leaves and I had set it out in the mudroom where it got no direct sun, and very little indirect light. I learned that I didn’t want to put it in the garage where it would freeze, so it was just waiting there for me to find a place to store it. I was VERY surprised when I discovered a bud and a couple inches of stalk. I moved it to the kitchen where there’s a lot of indirect light. I may move it once more, to the office, where it could sit next to a south facing window. I cant wait to see this plant bloom!
Yea, plant!
The War of the Iris
I noticed while I was on my hands and knees a few feet further down the garden that a small patch of iris was really short on dirt around it’s roots. Since I was there, I added som dirt, bringing it up around the edges of the rhizomes. Iris do really well in cool weather, so I thought there might be a bit more growth this fall, as they get ready to settle in for the winter.
I was putting a chrysanthemum in the basket by the front door and looked down at the iris as I passed. I could see the roots again! Apparently, where my iris is planted there is a back door to a chipmunk burrow. It’s too late in the season to move the iris, so every day from now until the chipmunks go into hibernation, I’m going to have to add dirt around these iris.
Doesn’t this have the feel of one of the Looney Tunes cartoons? I can just see one of those characters pouring tons of dirt over the iris and the chipmunks flinging back out again at jet speed! Darned little rodents!