Spring Clean-up

When do you know it's time to begin your spring clean-up? Andy saved me an article that had a different garden chore for each day. Articles like that are written well in advance and in actuality are only worthwhile as a list of garden chores. In real life mother nature (aka the weather) has everything to do with deciding on which garden chore can or should be done. 

Early this week our garden was covered in snow and ice and I had no plan to begin clean-up. Temperatures in the upper 50's and the amazing sight of this Hellebore that began to bloom with a vengeance changed my mind. It's instinct, I suddenly knew it was time to begin removing all the winter leaves from the beds.

I spent much of the day filling bag after bag with leaves and I was in all my glory.

This morning we made our first trip of the season to Home Depot to get some tools and potting soil. Their pansies were ok but not what I really wanted so we stopped at Fort Hill Nursery on the way home where I got a juicy flat filled with pansies and a few pots of Johnny Jump-ups.

Unlike yesterday though today was raw and cold with occasional periods of drizzling rain. Ugh... but I was determined to do more clean-up.

On the side of our cottage (as you look at it here) there's a little spot on the right of the porch. It's sheltered on three sides by the porch the house and a picket fence. In the fall we placed all  my succulent pots in this area and left the fallen leaves where they fell.

It's not the most attractive sight but it's the perfect holding area to overwinter potted plants.

As I started to remove the leaves I was thrilled to see how well everything wintered over. The Sempervivum (Hens & Chicks) and various varieties of Sedum looked great.

Calie spent the day supervising from her new favorite spot.

Look how beautiful these pots are! They are chock full of succulents and with a bit of sun and warmth they are just going to explode.

Sempervivum come in different colors, sizes and shapes. During the summer heat they lose their colors but this time of year the colors are super vibrant. I can't wait to start to repot these babies, it's one of my favorite garden pastimes. 

So what are you doing in the garden right now?

Sheer Exhaustion

After two days of perfect gardening weather there are only two words to describe the way I feel, Sheer Exhaustion.

If you look closely at this photo you'll see all kinds of tools and pots in the garden. Plants have been dug, weeds have been pulled, divisions have been replanted and compost has been spread. Yet, when I look at the garden all I see is a monumental amount of work still to be done.

Squeezed in between the never ending job of dividing and potting plants, I played a bit with the decorative accents in the garden. None of them are finished but they are ready for their finishing touches. This bicycle still needs a basket on the handlebars with some sweet spring blooms.

Don finished making a platform for one of my two iron beds. This one will be used to hold plants that are for sale. In other words, it's the "sale bed".

Out front near the street I've had this Whiskey Barrel planter for a number of years now. It's been filled with Hosta and backed up with an old wooden handtruck. Although I've received many compliments on it, I had envisioned it cascading with plants.

Now it's tipped over so it looks like "OOPS". As soon as I find an extra hour or two I'll go out and get a flat of annuals to make the cascade portion. I haven't decided yet if I want to buy a flat of pansies now or wait 3 weeks and get Impatiens. My guess is the Impatiens will be the winner but I hate having nothing there right now.

Tomorrow is the first of a dozen lectures that I'll be doing at the local elementary schools. I'm bringing along a praying mantis egg case, lots of soil samples, seeds and we'll be making pots out of recycled newspaper. I can't wait!

Melanie

Plants in Pots

Thanks to the rain we are getting, my morning plans have been cancelled. Today was to be the first perennial division workshop in my garden. My guinea pigs would have been the fellow members in my Nathan Hale Garden club.

So now I find myself with time on my hands but not the best weather for gardening. Do I still slip on that slicker and get out there?

As I sit here and stall, I find myself looking through past photos and find myself lusting over plants in pots. The opening photo here shows some plants I had potted up for last years flower sale.

This photo (darn it, it's sideways!) shows lots of the fun little sempervivum I had potted up last spring. I've already potted up several dozen this year but they need another week or two before they begin to plump up.

Newly divided daylilies taking a nice soak in my most useful garden tool, a kiddie pool! I'm not kidding you, this kiddie pool was well under $10 and has been home to hundreds of potted plants that need to take a nice relaxing soak. This year I will definitely buy another one.

Tip, don't buy the largest sized kiddie pool unless you want to wade in it to reach the plants in the middle.

When the kiddie pool is full, I'll use just about any container that holds water. Here are newly divided Epimediums taking a lovely bath. It's my experience that newly divided plants resent dry soil. By keeping them in a container with a few inches of water in the bottom, they seem to settle in and root much quicker.

Of course there's also the excitement of new pots of plants to replace the divisions I've dug out of the ground :-) These new arrivals were waiting on my breezeway last spring. I take photos of each pot with it's corresponding tag so I can keep a record of the perennials that I bring in to my garden.

Look closely and you'll see that Calie-the-wonderdoodle has snuck in the photo. She thinks I don't see her there. For a 70 pound dog she's done a good job of hiding here! As I work in the garden she will sneak up on me and steal tools that are in my back pocket or simply lay down as near as possible to me as I work in one area.

Ok, now after a quick post on Melanie's Perennials I'll get bundled up and go out there and get muddy.

Spring scene

It's cold and rainy outside. So, if I can't have spring out there, I'll make it be spring in here.

It might not be much but this little vignette set up on my kitchen counter is the first thing I see when I come in the door.

The Primroses were just being unloaded at Main Street nursery when I was there on Friday. The yellows smelled heavenly but I just couldn't resist this color combination, even though it doesn't have any scent.

Unusually warm temperatures this past weekend did a great job of melting much of the snow around here and today's rain is finishing it all off. Saturday I got to do a little clean up in one of the front beds and found foliage on the Colombines and Nepetas. By the end of this week I hope to be able to find some of the Dicentras (Bleeding hearts) popping up.

Melanie