On Time

Like many of you, I am finding that the change to Daylight Savings Time tried to make my day hellish. We tried to prepare properly last night. Altho we attended a family wedding, we came home early and didn't drink too much. You do not want to deal with DST with a hangover - please, take my word for that!

Fortunately, one third of our clocks update from the computer and another third from the mother ship or some such foolishness out of Ft. Collins, Colorado, so we only have to take care of the kitchen and some watches - as far as I can remember. We did them last night and headed off to bed early.

This morning I awoke at my normal sunshine time, also known as one hour later than normal according to DST and therefore the correct time, and was very pleased at myself until I rolled over to find...... no Mitchell! Empty bed. No one sleepily visiting the bathroom. Oh, oh?

Mitchell tells this fantastic tale sometimes in which I star as a lumber-sawing, sheet-rock shaking snorer. I am sure that you all know this is pure fantasy, made up of whole cloth, and completely inconceivable. Well......?

A bit of quiet reconnoitering and, there he was... asleep in his recliner - in the living room, in front of the TV, in the one room in the house that has no doors to close it off from all of the other rooms where I might want to go hide out while he gets a couple more hours of sleep! You know, like the kitchen!

What you don't know is that I am the morning person and he is the night owl. I hit the ground running and he drags his ass out of bed around noon. I go to bed promptly at 11 and he catches Letterman or SNL - in short, total opposites sleepwise, but great partners in sharing the house. On work days I am 3/4 finished with my workday when he rises, and then we have the afternoons together. And, at night I leave him happily reading when I nod off.

So there I am. Trapped in the bedroom trying to be as quiet as the proverbial mouse so that he can catch up on whatever sleep I may have inadvertently caused him to miss by - ahem - snoring! Oh, did I mention feeling guilty about it, too? I mean, he complains now and then, but has never before actually fled to another room! Anguish.

Long story short, it turns out that he was worrying about something, got up and stayed up a while sending emails - I hate to see what they looked like - and then fell asleep in his chair. See? I told you I don't snore. But we did miss out on really adjusting our internal clocks today! Maybe tomorrow. I think we have until the first of November to get it done.

It's Time To...

Along with sunshine and a bit of warmth, spring brings a lot of responsibility for those of us who love the garden! In zone 7 the first of March means an end to sitting in the chair thinking about how much we hate winter. (If you are in a colder zone [2-6] , you will need to do these things, but later in the year. I think it's 2-4 weeks later per zone. If you live in zone 8, you should have already started in February, and if you live in zones 9-10, you never stopped working in your garden and you grow different plants!)

Zone 7 is the pink zone. I'm in the light pink part - 7a - so I am 5-10 degrees on average cooler than dark pink - 7b. The greens - zone 6 - are 10 -20 degrees cooler than the pinks, an so on. The other things one has to consider are type of soil and PH. Central Virginia is highly acid and has heavy clay soil. If you move to the coast of Virginia, where the soil is sandy and they have more ocean warming, you are in zone 8.

It's time to get moving and start doing! So, here's a short list of things you need to start working on this month:

• Cut back the liriope. Doesn't matter what variety of Monkey Grass you have, it needs to be cut back. The easiest way is to drag out your lawn mover, set it at three inches and just mow the liriope. The goal is to cut off the old growth to allow the new growth to come up and not be all choked in last year's leaves. It will start growing by the middle of the month, so you need to do this soon. If you wait until later, you may end up with the new grown all being cut straight across the ends. Not a tragedy, but it will look a little hinky.
  

• Finish your fall clean-up. You know you didn't finish! We got snow early and then rain, rain, rain, so everyone has more clean-up to do. I still need to cut back the dead growth from last summer on many perennials - some of the Shasta daisies, sedum, and asters for sure. And, some cleaning up in the xeri-garden.
  

• Plant cold weather veggies. Technically, around here one should plant the peas by George Washington's birthday - now nearly two weeks ago. I have dug the bed and bought the seeds, so today will plant them. The next step will be to put up something to support them as they grown up, and a fence to keep out the rabbits. Other cold weather veggies you might want to consider are spinach, any of the "kole" family - broccoli, Brussels sprouts - or other leafy greens.

• Prune your shrubs. Most of your deciduous shrubs will start leafing out by the end of the month, or by mid-April - so now is the time to do whatever light pruning you need to do. Never, never, never take off more than one-third of the plant! Never! But if you need to shape up plants it's easy to do now while you can see the structure. If you have branches that grow into the plant instead of outward, you want to remove them as close the the branch as possible. This will provide air and light into the center of the shrub and promote more growth and a healthier plant. For plants that grow from canes (Nandinas, for example) you want to keep them from looking too leggy, so cut one-third of the canes back to the ground, one-third about a foot shorter than you want the top of the plant to be and one-third in between these two. As the plant fills out this summer you will get growth at all three levels and end up with a fuller plant. Evergreen shrubs - boxwood or arborvitae - only need to be selectively trimmed for "wild hairs" or lightly sheared. Flowering shrubs should not be trimmed until after they have bloomed.
  

• Start planning your spring and summer projects. You have probably been doing some of this over the winter as you looked at catalogs. Your plans might change based on what winter damage you have gotten. At the moment, I don't have but one small project. Am really waiting to see how bad the damage is from the standing water. Be sure to make a list. You know it won't get done if you don't write it down.

The important thing about March is not to do too much. It's so easy to get wrapped up in the "need to do's" that we forget to really enjoy the first stirrings of life in the garden. March is the time to enjoy the rebirth that happens every day!

After weeks hidden under snow
and ice the hellebores have gone
crazy with blooms.

What Was She Thinking?

You know. There are just some things that require few words.

The First Hints of Spring

Finally some progress! the first little peeks of spring showed up this week. This is a clump of Stokesia laevis 'Mary Gregory' that won't bloom until June, but suddenly it's come up and appears to be growing well.




In the xeri-garden I was surprised to find the first basal growth of the sedum "Brilliant" coming up. I had not expect that for at least four to six more weeks. The rest of the bed looks awful, but there certainly is hope.




Tucked away in odd spaces all over the yard are little bulbs coming up. These are mini-daffodils next to the drive way. Mitchell gave me the original corms at least 15 years ago. He gave me a membership in the nearby botanical gardens and they came with the membership. We moved them from our old house and they are always the first thing to bloom in our yard. It will still be weeks, but at least I know they survived the monsoon rains, heavier than usual snow, and all the standing water. It gives me hope for other things surviving.


A sure harbinger of spring is this dogwood tree. We transplanted it two years ago and this will be the first time it has bloomed. A poor photo, but you can see the little buds that are ready to go... soon.





But best of all, the hellebores have finally bloomed. In a normal winter, they start blooming in mid-December and last until June. This year we got our first heavy snow on December 18th. It weighed them down - smashed, actually! In January they were pancake flat and no buds or blooms visible. Suddenly this week here they are!


In another two or three weeks much will change. I can hardly wait!