Phenology

[pameladean]

I took Ari outside on his leash today. The first thing I saw was that the smaller of the snowdrops were up and in full bloom, in the sad raggedy rust-red loom of the white peony. The only peony shoots that are up are on the south side of the house -- wise plants.

Actually blooming:

Small snowdrops
winter aconite


Up and with leaves:

motherwort
dame's rocket
grass
yarrow
snow-on-the-mountain
vinca
creeping phlox

Putting forth shoots:

irises
daylilies
tulips
south-side peony
hollyhock
mullein

Shrubs with leaf buds:

mock orange (minute green ones)
lilac (fat yellow-brown ones)

It is completely typical that the crocuses, which are going to bloom any hour now, have not put up any leaves yet. I am actually amazed that the snowdrops and winter aconite are blooming before other stuff, because usually they hold back, belying their reputation as early hardy bloomers.

The yard is a terrible mess. I can't have done any cleanup at all last year. Well, apparently I did mow the back yard short (not the front, oh no), but that's really all. In addition to the inevitable collection of blown-in winter trash, there's an amazing lot of plant pots that I recognized as mine, and a pile of sheets used to protect plants from frost and then callously abandoned, and a spade handle, though no blade. There's also a general slimy layer of fallen leaves, grass clippings, sticks, and disintegrated terracotta plant saucers, which I dot around as bird baths and let the winter chip at as it will.

Grackles and house sparrows followed us around, and I heard robins. I saw three juncoes feeding beneath the weighted feeder, amongst the bright-red thorny branches of the wild rose. It must be about time for them to go north. Earlier in the day, cardinals, blue jays, and chickadees were much in evidence as well.

If I don't get to it soon, it will be too late to prune the roses.

Pamela

Comments

missing my garden

[ksp24.livejournal.com]

Living in the big city, no garden any more--just window boxes. I saw the first yellowing of the forsythia today in the park. The promise there is so lovely.

You words made me realize I miss gardening. I'll have to go get out the urge at my relatives sometime soon.

Re: missing my garden

[pameladean]

I remember going from home, where my mother always had a garden and I could pretty much help with it as much or as little as I liked, to college, on a huge beautiful campus where one could always plant the crocus bulbs one's boyfriend had given one as a birthday present in some sheltered spot, and watch them spread, to an apartment in the city and the knowledge that one's thumb for indoor plants was definitely, if not black, at least slimy gray. I hope your relatives are grateful.

Pamela

[angeyja.livejournal.com]

Who is Ari?

I think you talked of clean up but I might be confusing journallers, or perhaps you were mulling it. I don't generally except to tuck things under a fresh layer of mulch.

I did get the roses done a few weeks ago during a thaw but that was really luck, the thaw coinciding with a stray weekend. I was happy about the though as I missed it last year, and spent the better part of the summer trying to carve out some sort of space to walk/crawl along the house.

I think I have to re-envision your space and climate as I was thinking you would be behind us seasons-wise but this (a bit of an envious sigh here) doesn't sound it. When's your last frost generally? Soil? How large is your space? Light?

And have I linked you to the picture of my tree peony yet?

[pameladean]

Ari is my cat.

Here's a photo, courtesy of David:

http://www.dd-b.net/perl/picpage.pl/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/2000/Mostly%20Cats?id=EP850-20000410-001

Last frost date is May 15. Or else May 30, I forget. Most people don't plant their tender vegetables until Memorial Day Weekend, anyway.

Pamela

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

They always have those little signs up at Bachman's: "Average Last Date of Frost May 10." That's the only way I know this important fact.

K. [of course "average" means "half the time, it's *even later*"]

[pameladean]

Yeah, that's what I was thinking of. There's also an official, we mean it, really LAST frost date, and I really am thinking that might be June 1, to this day. Hence the Memorial Day Weekend gardening madness, when they put a traffic cop outside Lyndale Garden Center.

Pamela

[angeyja.livejournal.com]

Oh heavenly shot. I'm z4-5 but there's a lot of variance between different spots in the yard. I'll have to come back to the other post later; still trying to get myself out the door to do the shopping.

[pameladean]

As for the other questions, I should take some "before" photos. Basically, the house faces west, with a small front yard, two fairly narrow side yards, both rather overshadowed by neighboring houses, and a very long back yard -- I think when I measured it it was 90 feet long and 35 wide. We have no large trees on the property. The front yard is shaded by the neighbors' pea-bush hedge on the south and by the city's Norway maple on the west. The space by the sidewalk is quite sunny, though. The back yard is shaded by the house itself and by the neighbors' houses, as well as by a straggly but much-beloved line of mulberries, walnuts, and struggling honeysuckles that have grown up along the fence, thus escaping the propensity of the northerly neighbor to simply hack everything back to ground level except for his small crabapple tree. The back part of the back yard is quite sunny, again.

[angeyja.livejournal.com]

As for the other questions, I should take some "before" photos. Basically, the house faces west, with a small front yard, two fairly narrow side yards, both rather overshadowed by neighboring houses, and a very long back yard -- I think when I measured it it was 90 feet long and 35 wide.

Ah thank you that does help.

My situation sounds very similar except that there is basically no front an small are into which I've cramed an Abraham Darby rose and a deep purple climatis few small things at base... I plant into the boulevard, and pull some of the bigg potted roses up front, and this year I plan to make that more permenant with two very large (not really sure what to call these) troughs, and there's one side yard south facing.

My encroaching shade is coming from a very large maple in the house behind; my bigger problem is actually roots from this and a yew hedge. My next project is pulling down about half the shed overhang roof (as soon as I can figure out how to do so w/o pulling it down on my head) and then putting up trellising where the roof was (it'll be was eventually) I have more climbing roses and a wisteria that are ready to grow into this space. After or concurrent with that taking out some trees on the north side I've been growing lilacs there into a tree shape and they are big enough now to form a good sized privacy hedge there.

If you do feel like it a some point pictures are good; but, this helps.

[jinian.livejournal.com]

I've got peonies, too, little red palmations of them, but our lilac is well past the baby-corn stage of flower buds. There's this image in my head, a chart of your spring and my spring made up of maybe a dozen colored stripes and different intensities where things happen; it gets more and more complicated as I find out dates and rates. So far, not enough people in different climates post much about their gardens, or I imagine the chart would be a lot more confused.

[pameladean]

The buds on my lilac are the leaf buds; flowers are six weeks away.

Most of my peonies are not commenting. The one on the south side of the house is in a very sheltered spot, a niche formed by the house wall, the chimney, and the place where the sunporch juts out. This is a little too dry in hot weather, but very nice for early emergence.

I've been envying your plants for weeks, so it's nice I have some of my own at last.

Pamela

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Mmmmm. This is nice. We're going out to use our new padlock key on the Michelle Cutner garden and clean up some of the trash etc. later today. I'll have to make a similar list.

I was pretty pleased, though, to note that some of last year's supermarket rescue bulbs (forced daffs, tulips, hyacinths that didn't sell) are not only up but actually blooming. There are some tete-a-tetes whose leaves and flower stalks are only about an inch above the ground, but the flowers are blooming anyhow. I guess I planted the bulbs too deeply. I'll be rescuing and relocating these guys this summer, unless the new owners develop the property sooner than that.

[pameladean]

I was very glad to see that you wouldn't be locked out of the garden just when it needed you most, in its last days.

What's a tete-a-tete when it's in the ground?

Pamela

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

What's a tete-a-tete

Oh, sorry. Narcissus tete-a-tete -- early blooming miniature narcissus. They're the yellow things that are shown pretty close to life-size in the garden pictures I put up on my journal today. They're fairly tough little buggers. When I rescue these bulbs this summer, I may try them in my windowboxes and pray that doesn't kill them.

[clindau.livejournal.com]

Oh boy--this sounds nice. When I get home from the tour, I expect that lots of the landscaping that the owners of our complex put in late last summer will be starting to bud and/or bloom. The stuff that survived the winter, that is. Some of it was starting to die weeks after it was planted. They put in a magnolia tree close to the building; I hope that a) it survived and b) I don't miss its flowering.

Cindy

[pameladean]

I hope it was one of the hardy ones the Arboretum's been working on. I shouldn't think it would flower before mid-April, but I'm really not sure.

Pamela