Gawking Season

So far I have crocuses, scillias, and just a very few daffodils blooming.  My neighbor has his Tete-te-Tete baby narcissus open. Even so, probably the only flowers other than forsythia and a few of the early wild prunus species (not in my yard, though) blooming.  In a few days the PJM rhodie will bloom.  I anticipate it blooming  most years on April 24.  It missed that date this year, which gives me a week behind our typical season.

No dandelions, either, due to years of vigilance! (At least, so far...)

Still, for signs of spring, my neighborhood is the only game in town; especially if pedestrian traffic is any indicator.

I began moving a few perennials around which I had earmarked for such abuse a couple years back. Digging was out of the question last year.  This year I am able to edge my beds (foot on shovel) rather than hope the muscles in my arms are up to the task.  It goes so much faster this year.

Climbing the step ladder and scraping and painting the front porch have also been projects put on hold.  Scrap a bit, paint a bit; but I can't help admiring how much better the fresh creamy white paint looks, as I complete each section.

Still, nights have been cold; fluffy, ruffled pansies in the deck window boxes non-withstanding.

Time to Go

Robin on armillary obelisk captured through the winter glass on the front door.

How and when do we decide it is time to remove a plant or to make big changes in the layout of our gardens?

I have had a forsythia bush in my garden.  Nothing says spring so much to me as forsythia blooming. My particular cultivar was given to me by my mother in 2002, before I became so much more knowledgeable of forsythia in general.  Whichever cultivar it was, unknown, as my mother is not particularly adept at those types of distinction.  It did not bloom until its third year.  It has not bloomed in the last three.  There was a year here and there it did not bloom for one reason or another, bringing the total percentage of times it has bloomed to about fifty percent.

The rest of the time it is just a LARGE green bush. In a small garden.

Garden Efficiencies

Prairie smoke, always seems to bloom just a tad before
 I get the leaves rakes from the Long Border.

This last weekend I spent most of my time puttering around my yard. It was a great weekend to pull quack grass from the hosta bed.  The quack grass is green, yet the roots are not well established, the hosta eyes have not yet emerged, but I can feel their firm points as I work protected from harm by the soil.

I scraped and painted the side of my house where the Annabelle hydrangea quickly grow, hiding the peeling paint and making it nearly impossible to paint house without getting a fair share of pinkness on hydrangea as well. I went on to untie the climbing rose and alpina clematis from the porch railing and scrape and paint that, too.

I touched up the sour apple green paint on a trellis where a climbing William Baffin will make the job tedious at best in the near future.

My yard is not yet raked and neither are the garden beds, but I am not panicked. Spending time on these chores ahead of the other just makes sense to me. It is more efficient than attempting them later. I also think it seems much more efficient, too,

Over 100 Years in the Making

My white pine is well over 100 years old.  It is not until white pine reach that age that the bark takes on this craggy appearance.  There is so much more character there than the skin, you can hardly call it bark, on the younger pines.  I often think of the person who may have  planted this tree.  Did they envision it as this dominant player in my small yard's landscape, dwarfing the house they planted it near?  My house is a pink fairy cottage in its shadow.

I am waiting for a fierce wind to make it rain pine cones!

This little clump of crocuses are darling.

The emerging foliage of Virginia bluebells is like no other spring ephemeral.
It seems to be an almost dusky purple.

Hepatica, transplanted by ants.

The ants are always busy. I am never quite sure where I will find bloodroot next.
I am not privy to the gardening ants' garden plans.

After Taking it to the Ground...

Scilla under the privet hedge

Each year I tell myself I will move these.  Each year I do not.  They are perfectly beautiful where they are and protected from being disturbed, planted as they are within the drip line of the hedge.  As a spring ephemeral it is also a bulb which probably likes it a bit dry through the summer.

This odd little scilla was more teal than blue.
I intend to check to make sure being hidden beneath
leaves had nothing to do with its strange coloration.

Crocuses always say spring, don't they?

After being cut to the ground and having much of it removed altogether,
my dappled willow is poised to make a return display.  Hiding behind it a tray of Concord grape starts for my brother.

The Burn is on the Buxus

It will another two months before my front yard looks like this.

Yes, the buxus again have winter burn.  No real surprise there, with so little snowfall.  When your boxwood are winter burned and the azalea looks like it has been peed on by one too many labradors, there is just no getting around how brown the landscape is.

Beth Chatto's garden in the UK came up on my FaceBook page this morning and I can't help but be a tad jealous. All those spring ephemerals blooming their buds off.  (Of course, in traditional English fashion there were comments about the poor weather.)

What do I have to show spring is here?  The remnant of the daylilies are easy to pull from their crowns as are those of the lily of the valley, both sure signs that something is happening underground.

What really makes flowers pop is rain.  There is more than a bit of truth in the adage, "April showers bring May flowers." Here in the central part of Wisconsin we have had little precipitation through the winter and this spring.  Anyone in California, I feel your pain, but I am sure not the depths of your despair.  Water is still as close as the faucet here in Wisconsin where we still have vast reserves in our underground aquifers and an artesian spring bubbling by the brook north of the village.

As you grow as a gardener, you come around to having something blooming in all seasons.  I have always felt here in central Wisconsin we are limited in our choices.  I am envious of gardeners in other parts of the state where snowdrops and hellebores can herald spring.  I am not quite sure witch hazel could make a stand here either.  I have never seen any growing locally. With our deer population, even many native ephemerals have a hard time of it.

The limited range of spring ephemerals comes down to ginger (which is almost a non-contender harboring its flower under its low leaves), hepatica, bloodroot, trillium, daffodils, crocus, sweet woodruff, and Virginia bluebells-- hardly the show for a gardener to strive.

The appeal of their leaves makes up for the hidden flowers on this European ginger.
This ginger is evergreen and has a habit similar to bergenia, retaining its foliage throughout
the winter, unlike the Canadian ginger.

A bergenia shown with its "cold coloration".  I moved a healthy clump to the edge of the sidewalk last fall.
It is the only color in my front yard other than brown.

As the sap begins to rise in woody herbaceous plants, the bark of willows and cornus take on a more saturate hue.  In the brown of the landscape, my neighbor's yellow twig dogwood is nearly blinding in it pure yellow-ness.

Here we should be relying more on our cornus and low growing evergreen plants to provide us color. Even sedum with their nubile buds peeking up from the debris collected over the winter around their crowns can provide some bits of green.

Which is why is so irks me I cannot identify an evergreen outside of the conifer groups to provide some sort of broad leaf and the burn on the boxwood burns me.