"10, 9,..." and Counting: Days to Garden Walk

Not hardy here for the rebloom, but I have been wanting to see if I can grow it as
a hot house type plant and winter it over.  It is in a pot in this box planter. 
I adore the deep red hydrangeas.

Forgive me the urge to want to walk through my garden yelling, "Places, places, everyone!"  

My garden is very much a working garden with lots of fruit, salad vegetables, some few hills of potatoes to satisfy that new potato urge and a strawberry patch.  For vegetable canning, I rely on the family garden which I work on at my brother's with his children, the four-year-old Gardening Twins and Baby Gardener.

Nevertheless, I want to remind the lilies, daylilies, liatris, and the rest their big moment in the sun (hopefully partial sun-- the light is nicer, although we have had a LOT of rain this year) is coming.

Hazelnut, for the squirrels versus gardener face-off this fall

Will garden walkers realize how special these blemish-free apples truly are?

Or how ornamental Seckl pears can be?

Do you think people will see the joke in these chairs?  I NEVER sit in them.  They are actually just art.

"Clean, crisp bed lines..." even with a rock border "pull a garden together," says my neighbor Dr. Darrel Apps.  This was one of the best ideas I had to cut the grass out that tiny six inches.  I'm not sure why I never thought of that before.  The quack grass growing into my garden beds from the A.K.A. "lawn"  which is just a pseudonym for quack grass in central Wisconsin has been a pain!

My small attempt at under-ornamentation

That lavender doesn't grow well in zone 4?

Yup, they're yellow.... or will be!

That this mystery rose (maybe it's 'Eden'/Pierre du Ronsard') is a rarity here?

Clematis texensis 'Princess Diana'

Clematis buddy for my front porch climbing pink rose, overshadowed now, but the star on July 13, I'm thinking...

"Go liatris!'

Highly ornamental allium 'Summer Beauty' forming heads which will burst into loveliness...in nine days?

A zone 6 Japanese cypress and its buddy, "The Rock Cairn" hanging out.  The rocks just balance there, defying the odds and are not fastened... there is almost something magical in that I have never had to restack them.

It really has been a nice year for my clematis, some of which were early fall additions, buried very deep-- two nodules below what they were in their pots.

'The Fairy' rose in the border along the alley, forming an underplanted hedge to hydrangea 'Annabelle'.

And then it will be on to the the neighbor's across the way for garden walkers.  Dr. Apps' yard was born ready.

Last Day of March

This thermometer is on the south side of my house.


Above the garden of earthly delights-- indoors...

... and that's garlic growing through the snow.



A beautifully-formed Seckl pear.



A Lapin sweet cherry I am torturing into an espalier. The guide strings are attached to a couple bricks. Twice a year I review, prune, and adjust my guides and bricks. This will be the third year in the ground for this cherry. I am anticipating getting a couple pounds of cherries this year. I had about a dozen cherries last year. I surely do not want a 30' tall sweet cherry in my yard, so, "it's my way or the compost, Mr. Lapin!"


Those are the grapes I need to prune. I cut away a lot of the vine in the fall to prevent the over-wintering of insects and pathogens. It also allows me a better view on what I need to prune in the spring and saves the plant's spring energy reserves, while still allowing some of the mass of the plant to provide winter protection. I grow these grapes on wire strung between two posts placed eight feet apart. The posts are four feet tall.


My handsome dwarf Honeycrisp apple tree.

Today is the last day of March. I've lived in a couple different zones. Some places I have not only raked my lawn, but mowed it as well, once more than a couple times! I almost always have it raked here in zone 4. Not this year, though! Although I am starting to see brown grass peek out from underneath the snow, and my female boxer has taken an inordinate interest in the male dogs in the neighborhood (a sure harbinger of spring around this house!), spring is not here.

The sun is shining, though, today! Applause!

This weekend we are forecast to return to sleet and snow.

Typically, my apricot is blooming in about 20 days. That is hard to conceive!

It is still difficult to get out in the yard. Any sort of clean-up of storm-damaged, rabbit and mouse gnawed shrubs has to wait. I have hydrangea with swelling buds that I can not cut back because I really have no where to go with the clippings. Generally, the village begins picking up yard waste on the first Monday in April-- four days from today!

We are behind. When spring finally arrives, I am afraid we will be leaf-frogging into summer in the blink of an eye.