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.

Crocus Pushing Past the Winter

Yay! Crocus!

This is the second day they have been blooming in the back yard shrub border.  I think the ones under the giant white pine are still nestled in frozen ground.  The frost went very deep this year.  Very little shows any sign of life.  Since the snow has melted we have also had very little precipitation.  A nice spring rain might go a long way to making things pop.

Today after work, feeling less than my usual 50% these days, I think I pushed a bit too hard on yard work yesterday, I decided to forego working in the yard.  I have managed to cut back almost all of last fall's leaving, and rake several bags of leaves from the long border.  Many years I leave the debris in the shrub border simply because it adds compost over times to what I want to be more of a woodland setting.  This will decidedly be a leave it year.

I have planted some radishes, carrots, and a handful of peas.

Today though I also took my first pictures of my garden in 7 months.  And I took them with my phone.  I am mildly surprised with the quality.

What a tangle!  I usually trim this back in two stages, once right away,  and once it starts growing.  It is a sweet autumn and blooms on new wood. 

Clematis 'Josephine' , check back in six weeks!  It blooms on old and new wood so I seldom prune this at all.

Yesterday, this was a tuft of quack grass, which I managed to hit at just the right time to be able to cleanly weed it without the garlic chives present.  Today would have been too late.  Yay, me!  (Hate grass in the chives!)

The Japanese cypress has just a bit of green the bottom foot.  This is a wait and see...

Azalea 'Rosebud' I think did not survive.  If it did, I see no buds.  I will give it time, but no sign of "green wood".

Looks a lot neater than last week.  The shrub there, left center, is a forsythia.  The buds all froze off last year.  This year, it is unknown. 

Strawberries 'Honeoye' look good.  They usually start bearing two weeks before most.

Would you believe, in a planning meeting in like 1999, at Motorola, I uttered the words, "Who would want to take pictures with their phone?"

DUH!  Everyone!

(Of course as beta testers for texting, we thought the following message was in poor taste and lazy, too, "This is 4 U   pls call me  @ 2")

LOL, ya' all!

Gotta go rewind my DVDs!

Some Pretty Crocus

Such a beautiful bunch of crocus!



Bloodroot just peeking out.

(I like to leave the pine strawin place as mulch as much as possible.)

The Crocus are Blooming!

The crocus are blooming! I'm sure many others have had crocus before me here in zone 4. Mine are on the north side of my house in my hosta bed under a white pine. That's not the best location if I want to be first. I don't. I planted them there simply because those hosta take their time. That whole shady side of my yard where I dug up the very sparse grass and planted my lush bed of hosta (65 different cultivars!) is pretty boring in the spring before about the third week in May.

Yesterday, I also took a chance and planted out six spinach transplants. I know it is a bit early, but I wanted to get a feel for whether I have a significant rabbit problem this spring. Lot's of proof (rabbit poo) from the winter, but no sightings in my relatively small backyard.

I also planted some sugar snap peas along the wiring for my grapes and the west side of my privet hedge. I am always looking for spots to double duty and figure the nitrogen fixing ability of the peas will help the grapes, strawberries, and privet. The grape wiring and privet can serve as pea fence, and I'll take my crop and run with it.

Peas are very problematic here in central Wisconsin. They like it on the cool side. Remember just scant two weeks ago out temps were not getting up to freezing during the day. This Sunday the projected temperature in mid-70s to 80 degrees! Many gardeners do not even try peas, particularly edible pod peas, in spring because of the unseasonable temperature spikes we can experience here in the Central Sands area. Once in a while I do see a commercial crop of peas, although two crops of soy beans, or regular beans are more common.

The night prior to planting my peas, I soaked them in warm water. Hoping a germination early next week! I'll post them when I get them!