And More Rain, April Showers?

I took off the top 1 1/2 feet of the Japanese cypress, but the bottom which look looked a bit green, is looking browner.  Not the way this is supposed to go.

There was five minutes of sunshine today tucked in amongst all those little black rain clouds.  I took advantage of the sunshine to drag my trash to the curb and bundle the prunings Handsome Son did on my katsura over the weekend, and dragged them to my car and drove them the scant distance to the curb.  It sounds lazy, but moving me and anything else any distance, well it doesn't happen fast and I get tired.

I then decided to plant a few more sweet peas anywhere I have trellising and a rose or clematis hasn't started to bud up.  I noticed my alyssum has self-seeded along the curve of tulips.  I also noticed buds or shoots coming on four of my 11 clematis, so far.  Still crossing my fingers on those.  My William Baffin climbing rose and rugosa alba have buds, nothing yet on the John Cabot, Eden, Knockouts, or Blaze.

Most of the peonies have tips showing, along with a woody shoot from the ground on the Japanese 'Hanakisoi'.  I planted it deep, so although it is grafted to the tuberous type this is definitely an herbaceous stem.  I might not have any blooms this year, but the root is alive.  On a pricey, and hard to find cultivar such as this, it makes me happy to no end.

I have radishes coming up and it appears my primed and pelleted spinach seed has germinated.  So far, no shimmer of green on privet, which structurally would be quite a loss in my garden.  The forsythia is alive, but I think euonymus fortunei is not. The forsythia will probably not bloom this year, either.  That's two years in a row.

Yesterday, I drove to Oshkosh.  Everywhere whole foundation plantings of yew (taxus densiforma) are dead.  Many arborvitae are dead as well.  This is a particular hardship when a homeowner had a privacy hedge of either one fairly well-established.

I am still crossing my own fingers for a lot of shrubs around my yard as well.  I think spring is about four or five weeks behind here.  The number of hours where the temperatures have hit 50 degrees (F), I would guess is less than 20.  No dandelions in bloom yet.