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.

View of a Different Garden

View of a garden taken through the glass

This is my new garden view. It is a garden I drew up a plan for over five years ago.  It is a very formal parterre, 30' wide by 90' deep.  It has a diamond in the center with a fountain and pea gravel walks leading from each point and around the center diamond.  On the longitudinal sides are privet, which if maintained as I do in my yard could be a nice privatizing element, but is overgrown even with my impromptu hedging efforts taking it back a foot or so about once a year.  The differences with this privet hedge and my own show the need for constant pruning of privet used in this way.

There were several poor plant choices made in the lay out of this garden, however there are also a couple plant choices which have been excellent.  Lining the pea gravel paths is Autumn Joy sedum backed with shades of blue iris.  I would say the first 3-4 years this was an incredibly good choice.  It always showed to advantage.  At this point being perennial, desperately needs to be re-divided widening the path.

Pointing up each of the centers of the corner rhomboid shapes are Alberta spruce.  The original thought was to clip them into a formal spiral.  Clipping is, however, a time-consuming activity, and has not been done.  Running parallel to the center diamond are bands of yew clipped flat in a wide curled double "S".  There are some good bones here.

Plants were massed in the planted areas.  Still, there are a large number of interesting plants here:  the large large-leaved rhododendron which bloom in large balls of bloom in the spring, the Annabelle hydrangea, sundrops, allium glaucum, pink and white bleeding heart, masses of Asiatic and Orienpet lilies, various other species alliums.  There are also pedestrian things like rudbeckia which, however, is a good choice interplanted with the sundrops providing a continuously blooming triangle.

As the long view of this garden positions the sunrise behind the fountain from my window and the fall fog will hang like a mist above this garden at sunrise it provide a view of a garden in transitional light with the dew hanging heavy on the fall-colored foliage.  The fall colors backlit in the morning sunlight is something not present in my home garden.  It is an aspect of the light I have been admiring here, however over-run "my" new garden is.

It brings me joy.