State of the garden

Spring really is here; suddenly there are tiny leaves showing right at soil level that weren't there just a couple of days ago. The daphne is blooming; the crocus seem to have suffered gopher depredation but are blooming. The new hyacinths have their noses poked up but for some reason the older ones are not. Every few days I plant some more sees; so far, the Brilliant Oriental poppies are up, as are the Firefly heucheras but they do not have true leaves yet. Two artichokes are up and each have one true leaf. One vining asparagus is up. But nothing else is germinating. I'm really eager to do more, but Tim doesn't want millions of plants going in and out every morning and evening. I'm not sure what the problem is since I'm the one who normally deals with that.

There are finally tiny buds on the Amur maple that I figured only had a 50% chance; it was growing in the rocks at a client's house, with it's roots hopelessly entangled in the weed fabric. I did a lot of damage to the roots getting it out and really didn't cut it back. But at least part of it survived... the variegated meadowsweet is showing life to day, too. Still nothing from the agastaches or some others; a couple of really hardy salvias have vanished! We seem to have bought about 8 new primroses; gorgeous colors. They live out on the porch and are thriving there.

Did some raking of leaves and cutting back of dead stuff today; my back is telling me about it now. I am *so* not ready to start working! It's going to be a painful couple of weeks getting into the rhythm of gardening again.

Still sunny with no rain. The soil at my jobs has already turned into concrete, which makes it lovely to try and pry weeds out of it. But all the hummingbirds (we get three species of them here) seem to be back already, both males and females. Perhaps they got a discount for all traveling here at once.

The sunflowers and zinnias I seeded a couple of days ago are already germinating. Any day now we should be able to start leaving young plants outside at night- of course there will be at least one surprise late frost, but hopefully not a really bad one. I'm going to risk the young perennials I grew from seed by leaving them out tonight. They are hardy when grown and they look fairly mature.

The bergenia is blooming; I love the sharp, hot, pink of it's blooms. It badly needs renovating but I'll wait until it's done flowering. The miniature iris are also blooming, except for the blue/purple ones under the dappled willow. They are always behind because of the shade.

The peas are up (barely) and Tim just started the corn last night. The greens are suddenly expanding exponentially rather than just sitting there. In a few days they'll be going out into their large containers- must remember to get slug bait and put it in the pots right from the start this year. Heaven only knows how much slug slime we ate last year before I came out at the right time and caught the gross devils on the lettuce!

Sunny with a few fluffy clouds. Reseeded the greens that didn’t come up the first time; don’t know if they didn’t come up because the seeds are bad (they shouldn’t be; they are new) or if I let them dry out at some point. We shall see. Also seeded three kinds of sunflowers and some Pinwheel zinnias. Did some heavy duty weeding- grass in the perennials and roses- and some pruning. Started a few weeping willow and dappled willow cuttings. The blue Arctic willow cuttings seem to be doing well; at any rate, they are leafing out and not dying. Even though I didn’t really get that much done, it feels more rewarding than a lot of days.

Little Banshee was out for quite a while; he wasn’t up to really walking around so he got tethered to things and laid in the grass. He didn’t want to be too far from me; every time I’d walk off to empty a bucket or something he tried to get up and follow me. He ate this morning but is very droopy. I wish he didn’t need such a high dose of meds, but droopy is safer than status epilepticus.

Now to make the bed (also did laundry), make out some bills, and package up a few things for the post office tomorrow!

Enough snow has melted (in spots) that I was able to spend a few minutes outside, cutting back dead stuff and cleaning a couple of spots in the garden. This makes me ridiculously happy.

Silver wasn't too sure about today's mail:

But the contents proved pleasing:

I think our house has officially reached it's maximum number of lifeforms. Two humans, four cats, six fish, six ducklings, 21 chicks, hundreds of seedlings and the usual houseplants. And that's not counting the spiders that live everywhere.

Boxes of Interest

The cats are very interested in these boxes:

That's because the boxes contain these:

These aren't the horde that we ordered on the the internet; these are ones that the online place was out of, so we managed to find them in town. Five aruacanas and three gold laced wyandots. They are in our bathroom. Right now, they are cute and adorable and wonderful. In about four days, when they start smelling bad no matter how many times a day we change their paper, they won't be very cute any more.


This box is the biggest that the bathroom can hold; I really don't know where we're going to put the 26 when they arrive in the mail....

It's sunny, and we have our first outdoor blooms of the year. This is about a month early for our area; last year we were still buried in snow.


Also, some of the heucheras kept their leaves over winter. These three plants are seed grown from either Dr. Sitar's Hybrids or Dale's Strain; sadly, I don't remember which! They are almost identical in color to Ring of Fire, except they don't get the orange outline in fall.


Lots of the roses have leaf buds that are nearly bursting. Most of the perennials are coming up- one of the dwarf perennial peas is about to bloom. Sadly, it looks like my beautiful pale pink digitalis did not survive the winter, and I don't know if any seedlings will sprout for next year bloom. I hope so; I love that color!

I love primroses (primula). They are so cheering (and inexpensive) at this time of year, and when they finish blooming, I can plant them out in the yard where they live for years and bloom spring and fall!