Gardening April 12 through 21

What a busy week this has been. I’ve gone out every day to do yard work. The most exciting thing is seeing what plants are coming up and sometimes, there are changes between morning and afternoon. It’s amazing what warm sun will do to spring plants. They almost grow before my eyes.

I finished raking out all the flower beds and as much of the road dirt off the lawn as I could get. I still have a raked pile of driveway stone on the other side of the lily bed that I need to get back to the driveway. Plowing took its toll this year, but the snow had to go somewhere.

All the lilies I planted last year are putting in an appearance in various levels of growth. They don’t all bloom at the same time, so it will be interesting to see what happens. Most everything else is also looking fine, although some later blooming perennials have yet to show.

The right side of the house facing west.

Four white crocuses bloomed on the front right side of the house. There are leaves on the other side of the porch, but no signs of blossoms yet. The bleeding heart has poked a couple of red nubs out of the ground and some iris are also showing. I’m surprised that the day lilies that line the length of the front edge of the slab are also growing under the porch. The rose bush stems are turning green.

Three of the four crocuses

The left front side with the new walkway and two of the rain
barrels in front of the garage.

The left side of the front garden was extended into a curve when the new walkway was installed last fall. There’s a clump of green leaves near the edge of the walkway and I’m not sure what that is. Guess I’ll have to wait for it to grow bigger. Something is telling me it’s a week, but I’ll wait to make sure. 

There are some things here that are growing, but the coreopsis is the looking the best so far. The viola I transplanted in the fall from the flower boxes out back to the front garden near the driveway looked great and even had a couple of blossoms while there was still some snow, but the few days of hot sun seems to have burnt them up. I’ll wait to see if they recover.

The middle garden -- I want to come up with better names
for each of the gardens. I want to extend this one.

The big middle garden, made just last year, has lots of life in it. The cornflower looks the best with its gray-green leaves looking bushy. The lavender, which I brought from Bradford, looks like it’s struggling a little, but that may be because it’s early. All the columbines are coming up, as is the clematis. The hibiscus isn’t showing anything. They are a late summer plant, so I’m not worried. 

It is in this garden that I planted the daffodils and tulips. I planted them closer to some middle rocks near the crabapple with the idea that they will be first up in the spring, then, because you need to leave the leaves after the flowers die, other later blooming plants will hide the early ones when they are not so pretty. I admit I have difficulty deciding exactly where to plant and how to make a design. I usually end up picking a spot and putting the plant in the ground. Maybe in time I’ll figure out how to actually arrange plants.

The hybrid daylily garden. I'm happy to say all I planted last
year are coming up. Next step is to put an edge around here.

The hybrid daylily garden on the other side of the driveway shows every plant I put in the ground last year survived. I’m very excited about that. Late last season I planted perennials that had been in flower boxes on the deck along the retaining wall and below it towards the back of the house, down over the embankment. Unfortunately, I’m not sure what survived or will survive due to the installation of the generator. There’s some green showing on the level of the gennie, but I’m beginning to think most of those plants got trampled and disturbed too much with the equipment and gas lines.  

Unfortunately, the water ban is still on in the district which means no outside watering. I’m bummed, but put out my three rain barrels. If need be, I’ll get some jugs (I threw away the ones I had last year not believing we’d be in a water ban this year) and make trips to the brook or lake for water.

This section is at the side of the garage. I put extra lilies up here
and made tiers down the embankment. You can't tell in the photo
but every plant is showing signs of life.

The mulched area holds two more lilies.
Behind in front of the rocks are echinacea
and rudbeckia.

Below the retaining wall I had a bunch of various plants. They
put the generator on top of half of them (not where we had
originally discussed), 

Top of the retaining wall where violas
and other flowers were planted.
I think these got beat up with the
generator install.

Sempervivum hybrid

Sempervivum tectorum -- Red Beauty

On April 19, I stopped at Agway to get a new plant to celebrate my mum’s birthday, April 18. They had some beautiful hens and chicks which are succulents and require little water. Perfect! And my mum would have loved them. I bought three different ones and later that day, got them in the ground. I started a new garden with two of the plants placing them far enough apart to give them room to spread. 

Semper tectorum -- Piloseum.

I want to better design this new garden, give it some kind of shape. This might become my rock garden with pretty stones. Like with my paintings, I start a project, then need to let it stew for a few days or a week before I know what to really do with it. Each task takes on a life of its own. I just have to wait for it to tell me what it wants.