gardening: observing, planning, designing, and editing
Looking at the bluebell photographs that I never got around to posting last year, two things stick out: this year’s bluebells came up over two weeks earlier than last year, and they did not get nibbled by ravenous rabbits. There are limits to what they will eat after all.
The bluebells broke dormancy without attracting my attention this year—I was probably grading papers—but they were noticeable by the last week of March.
Continue reading “The Bluebells Are Dancing Early This Year”
It started raining yesterday, and it is still raining today. Literal gloom on top of figurative gloom is wearing, no matter how much the plants appreciate the water, so I pulled out a few recent photos to remind us all of the advantages of rain. Continue reading “A Respite From Gloom”
The bluebells were the splashy stars of April, but by mid-May, they are winding down.
They go fast at this point. Continue reading “Editing the Hosta Border—Deadheading and Tidying”
Virginia bluebells are a fast-growing spring ephemeral, and the biggest one I have. The main bed is a haze of blue hanging over the green.
We have been stuck in a cold and dreary weather pattern, and I have been poking around for days looking for something beyond Scilla bifolia ‘Rosea’ and snowdrops when the sun peeks out.
This year, the snowdrops bloomed first. The squirrels have done a pretty good job of spreading them out.
The Scilla bifolia ‘Rosea’ have survived the extremely heavy layer of leaves that I put on their bed in the hopes of tamping down their exuberance.
They are really beautiful, but their multiplicative tendencies are positively alarming. They are blooming in the lawn under the silver maple and in a big mass under the witch hazel. Continue reading “Cloudy and 37°F. Again.”
It’s been just a few chilly, rainy days since my previous post on spring ephemera, and the changes are dramatic. Yesterday brought wet snowflakes that melted on contact; I’m hoping that was our April snowstorm. We did not get the 1–3 inches that the meteorologist postulated, but the ground is quite soggy. There will be no plant rearranging this weekend. Revisiting the same plant species as in the previous post, I find bigger plants and lots of flower buds. Continue reading “Spring Ephemera Are Changing Rapidly”