It's Here - It's Finally Here!

Today I believe that Mother Nature is finally stirring! Last Thursday I saw the first tiny yellow daffodils starting to bloom, but it has rained four of the last five days and I could not get out to see them up close [and personal] until this afternoon. Even with the bright and rather warm sun, tho, it was difficult. With nearly three more inches of rain in those four days, the ground is saturated again and one has to pick carefully from high spot to high spot to walk into the yard. Fortunately these pretty little ones were in a bed next to the driveway, so I had asphalt for support.

You can't tell without something for perspective, but they are only five inches tall and the flowers are less that an inch in diameter. The original bulbs were a gift from Mitchell nearly fifteen years ago. When the local botanical garden opened, he bought me a membership for my birthday and it came with a bag of ten [I think] little mini-daffodil bulbs. I have moved these with us from the "old house" and as they multiply have started moving them around the yard. Someday they will be everywhere!

If you look carefully, tho, there are two more important things to see in that photo. The bit of lavender is creeping phlox that will be glorious in another week or so, and the yucca at the top is one of the red yuccas that bloomed for the first time last year. This is the smaller one that did not bloom, but I am hopeful. Will show you those in a few days.

I did a bit of weeding in this bed while I was there. Spring weeds are looking good and healthy, but they have not yet set any seeds so it's a great time to pull them out and avoid this year's growth and next year's new ones. Since they are small and the ground is - did I already mention this? - wet, they were easy to pull and the work went quickly. It is so much easier to do now. If one waits, then the ground will dry out and get hard, so that the roots break off more and leave little ones to come back next year. If one waits way too long, then they will set seeds and when you pull each one out the seeds will fly. It's a funny experience at the time, but disastrous for flower beds! [Can you tell that I have experience with that!]

The helebores are lovely. About ten days ago I waded in and cut back all the big, old leaf clusters around the plants, and got all the vegetation that had been crushed by the snow in January and February. With a few days of sun they have perked up and opened prolifically. If you look carefully in the photo above you will see a red flower peeking thru - right in the center. That is the camellia!

Normally it blooms in late November and on thru December. I have used blossoms on the Christmas table several years, but this year the cold hit us hard and early and I figured I wouldn't get anything. It has been covered with buds for months, but suddenly last week it, too, began to look promising. This is still a small shrub - only about three feet tall and less than three feet in diameter. It's nearly nine years old, but we started with a tiny little one.

Now you can see how lovely it is. This is the first year that we have had more than 10 - 12 blooms, and they are not as cold-damaged as I had feared. They are a truly double flower and dark red. So pretty that I cut some for the house. I guess they will be just as nice for St. Pat's Day as for Christmas!

Yes, indeed. Spring is finally coming to zone 7! Join me next week to see what else is waking up.

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.