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garden : rain perks everything up

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Grape hyacinths in the crocus bed, with super-long grass in the background.

Now that everyone’s tulips are in bloom, I think it’s safe to say I won’t be getting much out of the bulb transplants in the little bed around the lightpost. I know that you’re not supposed to move them in the spring (for this reason) but I was quite sure I’d forget where they were if I waited. Penance is waiting until next year to see what kind of narcissus I unearthed in the backyard last spring. In the meantime, the perky little grape hyacinth that I love and everyone else finds a total nuisance did bloom and will no doubt spread their invasive seeds back into the yard via their friends the birds. That’s nature for you.


Little white azalea in its new spot by the chimney, with creeping phlox in the background.

In a rare feat of perfect timing, we moved the wee white azaleas into their new spot (on the south side of the house by the chimney) just in time for them to enjoy several days of steady soaking rain. I’ve left the drip hose there because I’m lazy, but I only used it for a half hour after we put them in place. The phlox, a native type that I’ve forgotten the name of, are already happier there than they were all last summer; they pretty much baked nigh unto death in the place where I’d had them. What can I say, I thought (1) the foundation bed was shady and (2) the azaleas would grow larger and shade them. I’ve atoned by moving them, and it looks like I’ll get several flowers on each plant, which is a pleasant bonus.


The star flowers perked up right away, and loved all the rain we got this week.


This is the perked up version of the clethra twig I (hope I) kept alive inside all winter.

The rain was also good for all the plants I moved around into and out of the front bed last week. The spring star flowers are happy and upright, despite me daring to divide them, and the iceplant has already reoriented itself toward the sun and doesn’t look quite so obviously like someone sheared it in half with a spade. The clethra—Summersweet in the local vernacular—is actually doing well, too, although since it continues to look like a bare twig it’s harder to tell. I take it as a good sign that it hasn’t simply withered away to nothing, and if I peer very closely I can see what seem to be pre-buds along the stem. Very closely, and it’s possible that I’m just seeing reflected light, but I’m hopeful. So, with the native moss phlox blooming and everything else settling in, the bed is starting to look halfway decent. I’m quite excited to see how it looks when I get the bottom row of white carpet phlox in place and the mulch all cleaned up off the sidewalk; I’m just leaving it now to try to avoid losing actual soil.


The current state of the bed along the sidewalk; you’ll have to view the full image to be able to read the labels, sorry.

garden : rain perks everything up

garden : weeding, transplanting, and a baby dove

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After days of pulling up chickweed and dandelion, I finally called it done and mowed the backyard this morning; I’m leaving the front until next week to enjoy the violets a bit longer. I am quite sure I didn’t get all of the weeds, as I couldn’t be bothered to get the dandelion digger and just took the flowers. Plus, the short chickweed that I missed among the tall grass will survive my ample 3″ mower position and be back again next spring. I did learn this week that chickweed is edible, like dandelions; since we’re up to our eyeballs in the greens we actually pay for, I’m going to give eating weeds a miss this year. If the recession deepens, who knows.

In the category of ‘garden labor that is neither killing invasives nor walking around looking at flower buds’ I also moved some plants around this week. The moving around went something like: iceplant (which is really a type of sedum, although apparently now booted from the sedum family as well; I suppose taxonomists have to do something to pay the rent) from back to front; yellow daylilies from front to back, bluebells from back to side, Summersweet from a cup in the kitchen into the front bed, and some of my neighbor’s lovely little spring starflowers into the front bed. As a result of all this moving and planting, the bed along the sidewalk is starting to look quite respectable. The native phlox is blooming, and pollinators—that’s what we’re calling bees and bee-like insects these days, right?—are flocking to the lavender flowers. The aster and coneflower will be moving out of that bed to new spots by the foundation, just as soon as we get that bed prepared.

At the moment, with the violets in the lawn, the daffodils by the porch steps, and last year’s free irises sending up purple and white flowers it looks quite nice. It’s a bit frightfully respectable, as Christopher Lloyd would say, with the purple and white and yellow (which will only be enhanced when the white carpet phlox and basket-of-gold go into the front bed); although the crocuses didn’t bloom after last year’s transplanting, they are also in the same palette. Soon, however, the flaming pink azalea will be in bloom around the corner of the house — along with more white in the form of the other azaleas along the front of the house. The backyard has the huge salmon ball that is the quince bush and the flaming yellow tower that is the forsythia. What can I say, I’m not a fan of the pink, although the bright oranges, yellows and reds will be well-represented in the new sunny foundation bed. Along with (of course) more blues and whites.

As the icing on the cake of actually having flowers coming up in the garden, I was visited by a young dove while I sat on the porch. I’ve never seen one that small before, but it could fly and was following its parent on a tour of our yard. I think the nest is in the neighbor’s hedge, which is an excellent spot now that the neighbors have gotten better about keeping their cats indoors. I’m always pleased to see any birds in the yard; as I’m no longer stocking the feeders, they’re a decent gauge of how well our plantings provide food and habitat all on their own. So far the verdict seems to be: not too shabby.


With digital zoom in order not to get too close to the (4-5″ long) dove.

garden : weeding, transplanting, and a baby dove

garden : planning, weeding, and more planning

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Now that spring has truly arrived, I’m assessing what needs to be done in the garden and making plans. Plans for this spring, that is. There are multi-year plans in the works — replace fences, redo walks, eradicate invasive weeds, move roses — but those aren’t what I’m focusing on. In the short-term, there are beds that I’ve already created that need some work, and that’s where this spring’s energy is going.

First up is the foundation bed on southeast front wall of the house. For reasons that are no longer clear to me, I believed that bed was shady and planted azaleas and a native phlox there. It is, however, one of the sunniest beds around the base of the house. Which means that the azaleas and phlox are, shall we say, cooking in their current spots; I’ll be moving them around the corner to the south side of the house which is quite shady due to the shadows cast there by trees and the neighbor’s house. Once they’re out of the way, the entire bed will be (1) properly edged and weeded, (2) soil-treated, and then (3) planted to within an inch of its life with sun-loving and part-shade flowering perennials. This last bit is made possible by Springhill Nurseries in Ohio, whose sales — double your plants for 1 penny! half off your entire order before April 22nd! — were just too good to resist. I spent a few hours poring over the catalogue, moving little post-it notes (with such information as color, sun requirements, and flowering time) around on a map of the foundation bed, and cutting out little pictures of the flowers themselves. In the end I had a visual guide to the future garden and an order placed for 70 plants (at an average cost of $2 each). Not too shabby.

Not all of those 70 plants will be for the front foundation bed: one of the hydrangea bushes will be a thank-you gift for friends who helped us haul our belongings up to the attic (nothing like a ha’penny outlay to show you appreciate someone) and some are destined for other parts of the yard. Namely, the bed at the front of the house along the walk that desperately needs some help to keep all the mulch and topsoil from perpetually running down the bank onto the sidewalk. To that end, I’ll be planting a row of white carpet phlox under the daylilies as an anchor, as well as a row of basket-of-gold up the short edge of the bed along the front steps. But wait, you are now thinking, isn’t that where the aster and coneflowers are? Yes, indeed: those will be migrating into the foundation bed and forming part of the autumn-flowering contingent there. To create a bit more winter structure, I’m going to finally plant the Summersweet that I received at the Migratory Bird Festival last year (and hope that it’s actually still alive) in the corner of the bed opposite the light post and add the iceplant from the rear fence (dividing it into two clumps). I imagine it will still look rather — what’s the technical term? — scraggly this summer, but I’m hopeful that by next spring everything will have established itself. The lavender-colored phlox I planted there last year is happy as a clam, so that bodes well for the carpet phlox, which is really my main concern. The last bit of this grand plan is to add some summer flowers to the spot to the right of the porch steps that currently only contains daffodils. The parallel spot on the other side of the steps is where I’ve planted the lavender, which continues to grow and bush out and I expect (hope) will shoot out plenty of lovely flowers this year. The flowers will be globe thistle, shasta daisy, and some low-growing daisies in the black-eyed susan family.

All of this planting and replanting will be taking place in May, which is when the plants are able to be dug up from the field and shipped, and I look forward to a long leisurely summer of sitting back and watching my garden grow once I’ve gotten everything in place. There may be a push for the killing of more liriope or ivy, or the digging up of sapling stumps, and there’s also the issue of the bluebells I plan to move to the side of the house. But after that, after that it’s all sitting around and enjoying the view. Once I get the all the chickweed pulled from the backyard, that is.

garden : planning, weeding, and more planning

garden log : long slow spring

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Maybe it’s because I’m watching my spring bulb transplants like a hawk, but spring this year seems to be arriving ever so slowly. I’ve had only three crocuses bloom in the transplant bed, although six crocuses that I missed last year popped up in various places around the yard. The daffodils are just now opening, but only the plain yellow ones in the clumps that I didn’t actually move; the double-bloomed jonquils that surprised me last spring are nowhere to be seen. I’m hopeful that they’ll still make an appearance, as none of the neighbors have any blooms beyond basic daffodils and crocuses.

In other parts of the yard I’m starting to see signs of life. The forsythia is in full bloom, the flowering quince is covered with lovely salmon buds, and the peonies are being to poke their red shoots up from the dirt. The irises that I planted under the dogwood last year are also showing signs of sending up shoots; I’m sure the squirrels got to a few of the tubers, so we’ll see what’s left to bloom. I’ve gotten out and pruned the roses, although a couple of the bushes could use a second sweep since it’s been so cold. The large white azalea in the front of the house appears to have set buds, so I’m looking forward to that blooming.

From that list of happenings, it’s clear that I’m resting on last year’s laurels with the garden work this spring. By this time last year I had weeded and transplanted and dug and mulched. This year it’s been cold and I haven’t been motivated to get out and start digging up weeds. When I do get out there, one priority will be treating the foundation bed on left side of the porch as the sunny spot it truly is and rescuing the shade-loving azalea from the spot where it’s bound to be scorched through the summer. My neighbor’s removal of a thirty-foot magnolia from her backyard made our front yard quite sunny, and I am still tracking what that will mean for the plants. In the longer term, it probably means that we’ll have lovely raised beds of vegetables in our front yard, complete with bean and squash teepees.

garden log : long slow spring

garden log : let it snow!

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The impressively happy lavender plant by the front step.


Snow-topped garlic chives and ice plant, with aster in the background.

It doesn’t snow that frequently here; last year it only snowed once, at about this point in winter. Last year’s winter was hardly cold enough to be called winter, and I fretted that the bacteria and fungus pests weren’t getting enough nights of killing cold. This year, though, winter’s been satisfyingly cold (more satisfying for the garden plants than the inauguration spectators, I’d venture). Today’s snow is the first of the year, and will likely be gone in a few days, washed away by the rains that are coming tomorrow. Before that happens, I seized my chance to document the winter structure of the yard, something gardeners tell me is just as important as the summer blooms. Taking a closer look at the stalks I’ve left to do their own thing over the winter, for plant health as much as for aesthetics, I can appreciate the beauty of the beiges, browns, and reds, holding up the snow and staking out their places. The lavender is not even properly ‘stalks’; it’s thrived in its new spot and appears to be weathering the cold without any negative effects. Last year I cut back the aster, chives, and ice plants by now, as well as pruning the roses. I’m glad I let them be this year; the stalks are perky and heartening to see, and the roses are looking healthier than I’ve seen them since we moved in.

Just this weekend I noticed the first shoots of daffodils, star plant, crocuses, and hyacinths poking their way up through the earth and cleared the leaf cover away. I’m hoping the coming cold rain is just what they need water-wise and the snow doesn’t stunt their growth. There’s not much else to do this time of year except cut back the winter stalks and deadwood on the shrubs, both of which I’ll do just as soon as the snow melts and the buds become more visible.


Ice plant along the south fence, with the pink rose in the background.

garden log : let it snow!