Garden Update

I’ve been focusing mostly on indoor projects on the blog so far this year as cold and I don’t get along.  Well, it gets along just fine; I choose to stay as far away from it as possible.  It’s not you, it is totally me.  Meanwhile I have siblings standing on top of mountains and apparently enjoying it.  It appears that they are enjoying it anyway as they are smiling.  However that expression could just be a frozen grimace.  Anyhow, we had a couple days of sunshine and relative warmth a bit ago (if you consider the refrigerator warm in comparison to the freezer) so Timothy and I headed out to work in the yard.

This is my first video with my new camera so please be kind.

We have so much work to do that it is a bit overwhelming at this point.  Sir T is focusing on getting the big garden beds in while I am wondering where we are going to get enough good soil and compost to make all the new beds.  We just tried to make the most of the few nice hours of sunshine that we had on the few days above forty degrees to get a few projects done.

Timothy already pulled the garden bed walls and posts out last fall to be ready to move soil this spring.

 As you can see in the video, our yard kinda looks like a wasteland.  Late winter / early spring is a bit ugly in that everything is still brown and dead looking.  It is also a bit daunting as all the trees that have come down are in piles, the sand is very apparent and our grass is dormant.  However, I have bulbs coming up and perennial beds to tidy.  Taking a cue from one of the garden classes I took this winter, I did not clear the debris from the bed but instead just cut down the spent foliage, chopped it up and put it back on.  I also crushed and crumbled the dried leaves and put them back on as well.  Thus, I made mulch and uncovered the new growth coming up.  I did remove the spent peony plants as they can harbor disease and I took away the big grasses to add to the compost pile which is in dire need of more carbon to balance out a winter’s worth of spent coffee grounds from the local coffee shop and our daily compost bucket.

After doesn’t look too much different from before, but the daffodils are free to come up now.

We also pruned the apple tree in the front corner.  While working on that, I decided to attack the two evergreens next to it.  They are growing into the wires above and their skirts are dying out below.  They also shade out the apple tree.  We plan to remove them later in our garden overhaul plan when we get to the front yard but since they just looked really ugly to me now, we limbed them up.  We do appreciate the buffer they gave between our yard and our neighbor’s house but because the branches were dead and now see through, it just looked bad.

That one… and that one…. And over here that one…

Before with very unhappy lower branches.

Dead branches due to (I think) too little water and light as there is a large stand of trees to the south.

Sir T with weapon of choice

This makes me feel so much better.  We plan to put a hardy kiwi trellis here eventually and remove these two trees if the power company doesn’t do it for us as they are growing into the lines above.

Ok, so we did a lot of work, cleaned up beds, cut down grasses, pruned trees, dragged branches around, measured and laid out the garden bed corners, cut down scrub trees and brush, and took pictures of all the pretties starting to come up.  Here are a few of my favorites.

My early crocus with beautiful pink edged tulip leaves.

Gorgeous purple crocus with saffron colored centers.  I love the ruffles.

I have small groups of crocuses spread around in various garden beds.  I think I need a couple thousand more.

Reticulated Iris – I planted this group two falls ago and I love the blue.

Another reticulated iris that came from the same bag as the blue ones.

Isn’t the Heavenly Father’s creation spectacular?

Ok people, confession time.  I have in the past been accused of triggering snowfall after that date on the calendar announcing that it is now spring by being caught with my winter snowflake collection still up.  THIS year I intentionally took them ALL down on the first day of spring and the weather was promising.  Not warm exactly, but mostly sunny and the snow was almost all melted away.  The only spots it was left was from the mountains of snow created by snowplows in shopping centers.  We made it past my birthday safely with no present of snow.

Right – this morning we woke up to a minor blizzard.  4 inches of snow where it drifted, wind gusts that sent my wind chimes horizontal with an awful clanging, blowing snow and iced up windows on the south side of the house.  Um…. This is not good.  I do not like this at all.

Gray and gloomy and you can’t see my nice tidied beds now.

Birdie ice skating rink

I’m surprised the chimes didn’t get blown down.  My welcome mat is currently AWOL.

Ice on the windows and snow blustering around makes me very grateful to be indoors.

Yeah, so it is winter again.  There is a funny meme on FB that my sis-in-law posted in response to my sister’s lament about the snow.  It is very apropos for this situation.

I just have to hang on for 2 more weeks then….  Maybe I’ll have daffodils!