bay okay

I've been a tad concerned about my little bay leaf tree all winter. Most of its mature leaves got damaged by cold when I left it out too long one day- and they're still brown, crispy or blackened on the edges, some over half the leaf. Today I saw the plant is growing plenty of new young leaves, so I think it will be fine!

a few spring flowers

My camellia is blooming!

First bleeding heart this season 

and some of the older hellebores look great, although I need to go out and trim off the older leaves

more work today

I cleared more weeds, gathered up last years' leaf mulch (and respread it on the empty garden beds), and hauled three buckets of compost up to the front. Fed the daylilies (again, they didn't get much the first time around)

cleared up some and scattered compost over the black-and-blue salvia- no sign of emergence yet but I do see one gladiola spear coming up! and the lamb's ears on that side look particularly nice this spring

Out front I've more or less cleaned up the front perennial and flowerbed (I had to spread the work over two days). Divided a few allium clumps to spread out- I hope I haven't done this at the wrong time and ruined their chance of bloom. They stood up to the disturbance pretty well, haven't wilted much

these two are next to a tulip

Behind them you can see the fat shoots of peonies arising!

I also moved a few young columbines- they look pretty small yet!

To extend the row of older plants- it gives something to look at in the back of the bed when not much is growing yet, and then later when they're done flowering and died back, the plants in front hide the gap

I can tell now what things I do actually matter in the garden- my raised beds that didn't get composted and mulched properly in fall, the ground was hard, not all loose and soft and dark like other springs. I didn't come out and heavily mulch or cover plants against the cold (except the black-and-blue salvia and the lemon balm) and now I can see the usual mulch and leaf cover was enough for most of them. But I lost a few brunnera- here's one that did well regardless

There's only two mums showing new growth so far in the bed, and of the wild geraniums (cranesbill), one has revived, the other nothing growing. If I've lost it, that makes me sad.

Two or three of the clary sage also died, but I have enough left it's okay

My 'espresso' wild geranium in the back near the garden seems okay though

and next to it the hyssop in a container is doing great! 

I can also tell that scattering hair clippings and irish spring soap shavings was keeping the deer from eating too much of my euonymus and hostas. Because in fall I did none of that, and this winter the deer ate back so much of those shrubs against the house they look awful. I'm going to have to trim them back to reshape, and have started scattering deterrents again.

more pics later

second sideyard

Starting cleaning up a bit more over here, too. Pulled weeds, mock strawberry and old mulch away from the lungwort. I think I could divide this one next season! It's grown so much.

Did the same around the little clump of spiderwort, and found something that puzzled me

what is this plant, growing near its base? I feel like I really ought to recognize it. Maybe pokeweed.

The ostrich ferns further downhill in shade aren't showing above ground yet, but some here against the house in the sun are, and I found fiddleheads of sensitive fern just starting to push up.

It feels good to get out and work in the yard again, to get dirt under my fingernails. I'm still feeling sad at not having enough energy to go further and plant the whole garden, though. 

One lovage has come up- did the second one die this winter. Which would be okay, I never use all the plant anyway, but I like having two.

bright yellow

I'm actually happy with my forsythia this year! Surprised how much it grew- I know the deer eat the ends of the twigs but now it's tall enough to avoid most of that damage, I think. Bloom is best ever! I can see it from the house, so bright and airy. It makes me want to plant more of them.

Another pleased note is the small row of volunteer euonymus I dug and transplanted years ago. In spite of the deer, these two are finally getting some height too.

It looks pretty messy and bare back there, still- I haven't yet cleaned up the stems of monarda (new growth showing at their bases) but some of the ground covers are greening up- I found a few bits of woodruff showing itself

Nearby the patch of purple lysimachia, which hasn't filled in much noticeably yet (here's one of the dozen or more individual plants)-

and I thought this was the same plant that's coming up in a few places in the lawn- but not sure now

I'm still liking the creeping jenny- here's how it was last season

and now filling in more- but have to be careful to keep it from spreading too far- it could be invasive I've read (if it got into the neighbor's yard and then further into the woodland behind)

Also to note nearby, the younger St. john's wort I grew from seed

and planted out last year, is looking better this time. Since I cut it back it's filled in and not as leggy

a bit of work

Spreading the compost. Yesterday I used two buckets-worth (well, not quite full, they each had three shovelfuls) and fed the rhubarb and all plants on the first sideyard- black and blue salvias, lamb's ears, gladiolas, daylilies, joe pye weed, milkweed. Some of those are still hidden belowground. Pulled more of the vinca away from the salvia and daylilies. They're flowering now- little pale lavender-purple stars. I do find them pretty, but don't want them everywhere and it spreads so.

Today cleared out dead leaves (the huge ones from the neighbor's sycamore) from under the holly shrub and mulched with compost just that one spot- the beautyberry, heucherellas and some yellow salvias. Also pulled some weeds against the fence where I've let (what I think is) shiso grow tall the past year or so.

I'm glad to see the beautyberry is spreading- there's smaller shoots coming up on the sunny side of the shrub. I wasn't aware it would spread like this. I don't at all mind getting a bigger clump of it in this corner, and then maybe digging up pieces from the outskirts to transplant to other areas of the yard . . . 

Tired out, ready for a break again!

it's been very cold

the past few days, so I haven't done much outside. Yesterday went out for just half an hour to cut back some dried stems of last years' turtlehead, sedums and nicotiana, cleaning up a few of the perennial beds. I broke the dry stems into shorter bits, mixed with some rough compost, and put as mulch around the strawberries. That wore me out for the rest of the day (yes, still in recovery stage). Took a picture of the wormwood, I do so like its pale blue-green frosty color.

My husband helped me turn the compost pile, which was difficult because the layers almost frozen together. (It's hard for him to find time to do this kind of thing, so I didn't wait for a warmer day). It was a shorter "compost cake" than usual, only up to my thigh, but I still made delighted comments which caused my husband to joke about what if it was an actual cake. He shoveled the wheelbarrow two-thirds full and moved it up near the garden for me. I sifted out the rougher stuff by hand, and will later mix the more finished compost with leaf mulch, start spreading that under perennials and shrubs, one bucketful at a time- it's about all the workload I can handle, still.

Cheers for spring- sweat and muddy shoes and all.

floof!

My daughter really loves fluffy things, so this makes me think of her and smile. Seed puff from last season, on my pink clematis.

New leaves and buds coming up!

spring herbs

A few days ago I posted pictures of my herb bed last summer. Well, here's what is actually green right now. Sorrel! I'd have more of this to eat if it wasn't for the deer.

Next to it, lemon balm still alive under there. Don't know why it cheers me so much each spring to see these things growing again- they do it every year- but yet it does, enough to take pictures and admire.

Sculpit- enough to start eating it again. Just had some the other day, with onions as a side dish to pasta.

I still don't know why my winter savory is not doing well. I didn't even eat any of it this season. Only a few green leaves on the whole plant-

most of it dried up and sad like this, or naked twigs.

Lavender is doing great, though!

I'm not expecting my sage to regrow, sadly- that one also hasn't done great lately. And I'm going to have to restart green onions again. But hope to see the tarragon and lovage come up again.

spring

makes me antsy to get out and do things, build. Forsythia is blooming, time to plant out lettuce but I don't have any seedlings ready. I need to trim the eunoymus, turn the compost pile, clear old leaf litter and replace mulch on the perennial beds, reset some bricks that edge the garden beds where they're leaning wonky, etc. I just don't have the energy yet. I went out yesterday and cleared weeds from one garden bed again, and that wore me out. 

It was the long bed #1, which had chard and strawberries last year (that never fruited). The weeds are so thick in all the garden beds because I didn't mulch properly in the fall. You can tell by how bare the ground is, now that I've pulled out the dead nettle and other stuff. It was nice to see a few bees out foraging on the nettle flowers on a warm day, but I still don't want the stuff all over my garden anymore. Here's the bared strawberry plants. They've spread, but the older plants I originally put in, aren't much bigger than the new plants. And I don't know if any will bear, as I didn't feed them in fall.

A few of the previous years' leaf beet chard rootstock sprouted new leaves. (You can see how far the strawberry runners spread- they weren't planted this close to the rows of chard!)

I cut all those baby leaves off, plus those from one likewise newly-spouted old collard plant in bed 8 with the catmint (it's very small)

and used them in a dish with the cowpeas. Finally I have cooked my cowpeas! I though it odd that after soaking, only some of them had doubled in size. Forgot to take a picture of the final dish. I found (of course) conflicting info online how to cook black-eyed peas: soak or not. I went with a two-hour soak before cooking and don't think it was enough. Had to simmer them longer than the recipe said and they just got barely tender, not creamy. Basically the recipe was: sauté onion, garlic and a bit of minced celery, simmer with the cowpeas in chicken broth and water, add bay leaf and some spices- the main one was thyme which I didn't have so I used summer savory. 

It was not really a hit. It was okay, but nobody really liked it. And the fact that two years' worth of saved dried cowpeas only got me one small meal (I had to cut the recipe in half), was beyond pathetic. My husband said "you were successful! We're eating it!" but I cringed inside.

I do appreciate how lush the cowpeas grew (pic from last season below), and how little they were bothered by pests and disease in my garden- but they just didn't give me enough output. True there'd be more dried peas if I hadn't eaten so much as fresh green beans, but I still think it would have just made a handful of meals, is all.

Well, I'll have to re-evaluate that. In another part of the backyard, my rhubarb is emerging! I really would like to make pie with my own rhubarb and my own strawberries again, but I probably will have to settle for just half of that being home-grown this year.

More pics to come.

today

it was just warm enough to put my boston fern out on the porch for a few hours. I started thinking about the ostrich ferns in the back yard and hoping they come up again- this was my last pic of them the season before. They're not growing huge and spreading yet like I'd hoped.

Maybe a good dose of compost this spring will assist.

colder today

Once again I did a little work outside, even as it was starting to drizzle. Walked up the slope on one side of the house to cut back mess of old salvia stems under a shrub, and deadhead last years' autumn joy sedums. New growth is thick around their base. Also trimmed the small rue plant in that bed. On the other side of the yard I pulled off all the flopped over leaves of gladiolas, and cut out diseased/dead leaves and stems on the lamb's ears. It was messy. Most of that went into a bag to put on the curb- my compost heap bin is overflowing and hasn't been turned/emptied yet. I raked up a small part of the first sideyard (leaves scattered from my mulch out onto the lawn) and put the litter back over the blue hosta spot where wind had swept it bare. And that's all I could do. Out of breath and tired. 

 Here's another picture from the year before: rue seedlings! The few cuttings I had taken and put in pots all died, likewise some I had just stuck in the ground by the milkweeds. I think I'll just have to let seedlings that come up on their own, grow a year before I move them.

That seems to be working better with the hellebores. Once before I had transplanted two-year-old seedlings- and a single one survived. It's blooming now, and looks so nice I tried again. Year before last I had cleared clumps of seedlings out of the bed in the backyard, leaving just a dozen of the larger ones to grow up. Just last week dug a few of those (crowded with more tiny new seedlings again) and moved them to the front bed in that same row under the boxwood. They're twice the size of my first attempt, and have had a week of cooler weather and rain now to settle in.

Here's some others that are- three years old now I think? and have not yet bloomed for me. Ones I got from another gardener, planted in a different area of the yard where the ferns and hostas get eaten by the deer. I'm not sure why they're still smaller. Too much shade? or maybe I didn't feed them enough compost to boost growth.