Goodbye, April! Hello, May! Time for Lettuce

Lettuce! From the garden! And yes, quite delicious, it is. I had some on my sandwich at lunch today, and that made my 'brown bag' lunch seem like the finest gourmet cuisine.

And to think that I almost didn't pick this lettuce yesterday evening because I didn't want the month of April to get credit for it. Earlier this month, I documented my thoughts on this April, also now known as "Hate-pril" because it turned so cruel on us.

But somehow the lettuce, a cool season crop, made it through April.

Here's my lettuce bed:

You can see that I am a bit of a lazy lettuce gardener. I plant rows of lettuce in March, then leave it alone and start harvesting in late April. I should thin out the lettuce to get better heads to form, but I don't. I should also do some succession planting to extend the lettuce harvest, but I don't do that either.

I covered this raised bed with row covering when I planted it to keep the rabbits out. That's why the onions on the left look all bent over. They'll straighten up in a few days. Next to them are a few radishes, then a wide space where the beets were before they were zapped by the April cold. Then there is some spinach and the three rows of lettuce: 'New Red Fire', 'Pinetree Mix' and 'Tom Thumb', all from Pinetree Garden seeds. Along the back are some peas, variety 'Green Arrow', just enough to hopefully get a few small servings, raw and cooked.

I am concerned that the rabbits will discover those peas and the spinach, so I sprinkled them with cayenne pepper. So far, so good after 24 hours. Oh, and I used my new stirrup hoe to knock out a few weeds between the rows, which is why the bed looks so nice and weed free. I love my new hoe. It is one of my favorites, definitely in the top ten. How I gardened without it, I'll never know.

And now as the sun sets on April, we have the glorious days of May before us and many more days of fresh lettuce.

What could be better in a zone 5 garden than May, I ask you? All year I wait for this month, and now it is nearly here. Breathe the fresh air, enjoy the sunshine, see how green the grass is, how blue the sky is, watch as each day a new flower blooms. It's time to eat lots of fresh lettuce from the garden! It's time to plant the rest of the garden! It is the eve of May in May Dreams Gardens! Let the fun begin.

When April steps aside for May,
Like diamonds all the raindrops glisten,
Fresh violets open every day,
To some new bird each hour we listen.
- Lucy Larcom, American poet (1826-1893)

Lily of the Valley

Do certain plants still trigger strong childhood memories when you garden with them every day?

Pam/Digging asked this question in response to a comment I left on a post she wrote about her childhood garden.

The short answer is yes.

Though the plants I have in my garden are familiar to me, since I've known them all my life, several of them always remind me of my childhood.

When the lily of the valley (Convallaria majalis) blooms, I recall sunny Sunday afternoons visiting my grandmother. She had a colony of lily of the valley by the side of her house, and when they bloomed we always picked bouquets of them. Even the smallest child can easily pick these flowers, and we picked lots of them. Grandma always seemed pleased when we presented them to her and would set them in vases on her dining room table.

Occasionally, we would also pick violets at the same time, to create a mixed bouquet like this one.

Now that's a bouquet from my childhood, and I like to enjoy one like it every year.

I have two colonies of lily of the valley in my own garden, started from plants I got from one of my sisters. But when I went to my aunt's house last spring to see her garden, I dug up one of her lily of the valley, even though I already had plenty, because hers came from my grandmother. I potted it up and overwintered it, and now I need to give it a home. But I don't want to put it with the other lily of the valley. I want to put it in its own spot, so I'll always know which one came from my grandmother's garden. I just need more shade.

(A special note to a couple of my sisters who are going to read this and ask "why didn't you get one for me"? I don't know why not because our aunt has plenty of it. It was hot the day I dug them up, and it was almost an after thought, because I already had lily of the valley. But then I couldn't resist because these were Grandma's. We can go back for more. Our aunt is generous with passalong plants!)

Green Thumb Sunday - Snow In Summer

I'm referring to the flowers, not the weather! Cerastium tomentosum, Snow-in-summer. It's a beautiful day, not a snowflake in sight, except for this snow-in-summer.

Join

Nesting, Mowing, Racing, Blooming

This afternoon I found this robin's nest in the crab apple tree in front. The bird who built this nest is pretty smart because it is in an ideal location. She was also a fast builder because this nest wasn't here a few days ago, or I'm not very observant.

Now whenever I go out my front door, she'll fly off and sit on the edge of the roof and squawk at me until I leave the area. There are no eggs yet, but I'm sure it is just a matter of time. I'll leave the nest alone until all the birds have hatched and then remove it.

I only had time to mow my grass today. My neighbor was mowing at the same time, with his riding mower. Just like last summer, he rounds the corner at the property line and scrapes the grass there, in my yard, down to bare ground. I'm not going to worry about it because they do keep their yard looking nice and are nice people. Besides, it's in the strip between the sidewalk and street, and it is just grass.

I also saw my sister's neighbor on his riding lawn mower when I was at her house in the morning. This particular neighbor is very nice and traveled around the world as a missionary before he retired. He always wear a white dress shirt and tie, even when he is mowing the grass. And this morning since it was still a little chilly outside, he also wore his suit coat. I'm not making this up. He was mowing the grass in a suit. He always wears a dress shirt and tie. Always.

Spring is starting to progress nicely here in central Indiana and in just a few days it will be May. May is a pretty exciting month around here, could you guess? In May, we transition from spring to summer and everything is very fast, both in the garden and around that race track in Speedway, "the racing capital of the world".

In just a few weeks, or sooner, we will say good bye to the tulips for another year and say hello to the next group of flowers, which includes these alliums that are starting to bloom. They will soon be joined be several other plants getting ready to bloom in a few weeks, including columbine, peonies, and lilacs. The whole month of May and Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day on May 15th should be pretty exciting here at May Dreams Gardens!

I Found Deidre

I found Deidre, my Viridiflora tulips. I posted about them a few weeks ago because I could not remember where I planted these green tulips.

This morning I found them. I remember now what I did. When I planted the tulips last fall, I opened all the packages of bulbs and mixed them together and then planted every single one in the new flower bed I made around the lamp post.

I think that was a mistake for Deidre. She is having a tough time competing with the other tulips. I should have planted these green tulips in their own group someplace where they could be viewed together and not have to compete with all the other tulips.

See how they are in the group? Not too showy.

Deidre just does not stand out like this tulip below.

And since this tulip has no name that I know of, I'm naming it "Spring Sunset".

Once these all the tulips finish blooming, I plan to pull them out of this bed and either compost them, or replant them someplace in the back yard and see if they come back next year. Anyone have any good success moving tulips like that?

Leafing Out

How long will we live with reminders that this spring played tricks on our trees and shrubs, with the early warm weather causing them to break dormancy ahead of schedule and then the return of winter zapping them back to reality?

Looking around, I think it is the trees that were most impacted by the warm-very cold-warm cycle and recovery will take some time. Above is a branch from a honey locust tree (Gleditsia tricanthos) showing the little leaves that were zapped by the cold and the green buds that tell me this tree will be fine.

Below is a red maple tree (Acer rubrum). It, too, will be just fine.

I'm not quite sure what to expect from this red bud (Cercis canadensis). It is struggling a bit trying to leaf out.

And I have a couple of other trees and shrubs that look even worse.

But now is not the time to start pruning. We need to wait and give the trees and shrubs a chance to recover. So, I'm going to follow my normal spring schedule of planting and gardening and then see how the trees and shrubs look before I buy a chain saw.

Garden Bloggers' Book Club April Newsletter

Welcome to the April edition of the Garden Bloggers’ Book Club Newsletter!

April-May Selection

We are reading a book every two months through the spring and summer because it is so busy in the garden. The April-May selection is Passalong Plants by Steve Bender and Felder Rushing. I’ve had this book for many years, but am enjoying re-reading it. It is also one of those books you can skip around in, perfect for when it is busy in the garden.

And if you just simply can’t find the time to read the book this spring, you can post about your favorite passalong plant, either one you regularly give to others, or one you received from someone else. I think every gardener ends up with a passalong plant somewhere along the way, so this is a book club virtual meeting that everyone can participate in.

And it’s easy to participate. Post about the book or a topic related to the book. Leave me a comment or email to let me know you’ve posted so I can find you. Then I’ll put together a “virtual meeting” post on May 31st with links to all the posts I know about.

June-July Selection

Anyone have ideas on what to read in June and July? I’ve got a few books I'm considering, but none of them stand out. That could be because my mind and energy are in the garden right now, or it could just be because I haven’t found the perfect book for summer. We need a book that you can read while lounging in a hammock in the garden, relaxing after the flurry of spring planting. And it should, of course, relate to gardening, gardens, gardeners or plants.

If you have suggestions for the June-July selection, please leave them in a comment or send me an email. I am planning to announce the selection in a few weeks.

Thank you!

Thank you again to all who have participated in the past. This online book club is really open to everyone, so I hope some of you who have not participated in the past will join us in May.

Happy Gardening and Reading!

(Can you guess what's blooming in my garden, pictured above? It's Viburnum lantana 'Mohican'. Just as every gardener needs some good books on gardening, every garden needs at least one Viburnum!)

False Flowers, Contradictions in Advice, and Radishes

Not all is always as it seems in the garden. There are false flowers that are real flowers, but called false because they look like something they aren't.

These are False Forget-me-Nots, Brunnera macrophylla, blooming today in my garden. This is one of those plants that started to bloom in late March but then the flowers disappeared when it got cold. Now they are back, all blue and tiny and pretty.

I don't believe that I've ever known anyone who grew real Forget-Me-Nots (Myosotis sp.) around here so I did a Google search to find out more about them. That took me to the USDA Plants database website, and now I have more questions. If you look at this map of where Myositis arvensis (Field Forget-me-not) grows, you will find it grows in all the states surrounding Indiana, but not Indiana. It is as though we've closed our borders to this flower. Hmmm... I'll have to do some more research.

How about someone doing some more research on false flowers in general and planting a whole garden of false flowers? You could plant False Dragonhead (Phyostegia virginiana), False Indigo (Baptisia sp.), and False Sunflowers (Heliopsis sp.) for starters, oh, and False Forget-me-nots. I'm sure there are other false flowers that we could come up with. Who will plant a false flower garden for all of us to see?

By the way, I got a few comments yesterday that perhaps I was offering advice that taken at face value, might be hard to follow. So I wanted to explain how you can avoid buying tender annuals plants too soon when we could still have a frost and yet not wait to buy plants when you find what you want. I'm about to reveal a secret method on how to do this, one that takes a bit of willpower and a small measure of confidence in the methods of growers and retailers. Get a piece of paper and a pencil to write this down, or fire up your printer...

Here's the method...

Don't go to the garden centers until right around your average frost free date for your area.

That's right. I have not yet been to a garden center, so I have not been tempted to buy annuals yet, because I think it is too early here. Yes, I have walked through a big box seasonal department, but I kept my eyes straight ahead and did not look at the annuals.

I'll go the week of May 7th, which is around our usual frost-free date of May 10th. The garden centers will have plenty for me to buy, even then, because they are getting new plants in all the time in the spring. The growers don't sow thousands of annuals on one day and then ship them all out on one day, and that's that. They spread out their sowing over many weeks in the late winter so that for many weeks in the spring they have fresh plants to ship out. And local growers who sell on site are doing the same thing. Every day, they are bringing plants up to the front from their greenhouses in the back, as the plants reach the perfect size for selling.

I've always found what I wanted with this method and have never felt like I was picking through what the early birds left behind. Sometimes I've even run into the early bird buyers, re-buying their annuals after a late frost.

And to ensure you are getting fresh plants, you might just make friends with the staff at your favorite garden center to find out when they will be getting new shipments of plants so you can time your visit accordingly. If they are growing plants right on the premises, and you don't see what you want, ask if they have them in their greenhouses. Sometimes they do, and are just waiting a few more days to bring them out. They should be more than happy to check because their business is selling plants, and they wouldn't want to see you leave and go to the competition, if they have want you want back in their greenhouses. If they won't check, leave and go to the competition.

Which brings me to radishes (and lettuce and peas and spinach and onions). So far, I'm winning the competition with the rabbits to be the first to eat from the garden. This evening I harvested a few radishes and green onions.

I cleaned them up and ate them. They were quite tasty. Better than store bought!

This weekend I'll be harvesting the first of the lettuce. I can hardly wait.

Hurry Up Season Has Officially Begun

Peony buds... the first sign of the "hurry up season" for gardeners in Zone 5. Suddenly, it is warm outside and things are starting to move at a remarkedly quick pace. Now is the time to get going, no time to procrastinate. Hurry up Season is here!

We sat around all winter lamenting the cold and lack of gardening activity. We griped through a colder than normal spring slump, and now it is like summer outside. It's time to put in motion all of our plans and dreams for the garden.

When I saw those peonies with buds this evening while mowing the lawn (for the 6th time, but who counts how many times they mow the lawn?) I darn near panicked, there is so much to do in the spring, and never enough time to do it all. Got to make hay while the sun shines. Got to take advantage of daylight and sunshine, for tomorrow it might rain.

Do you want some advice on what you should not procrastinate on in the spring?

• You should not hestitate to buy the perfect plant or the perfect flat of annuals at the garden center when you first see it. If you wait and see if the next garden center has something better or cheaper, they won't, and when you go back to get what you wanted, it will be gone. Some other gardener will have purchased it.
• You should pull weeds when they are small. Big weeds fight back when you try to pull them, and they flower and go to seed.
• You should transplant perennials while they are small, they'll do better in the long run. This evening I checked all the perennials I transplanted yesterday. All looked good, no plants seemed droopy or pouty about being divided and moved.

And how about some advice on some things you should not to do in the spring...

• Don't buy frost tender plants too early. It seems all warm and summery now, but we could still have some frost. I've personally experienced frost as late as May 20th in my Zone 5 central Indiana garden.
• Don't look at the garden center if you are just driving by. Keep looking straight ahead. Otherwise, you'll get all crazy and twittery with the idea that when you finally get there, all the good plants will be gone.
• Don't forget to actually relax and breathe and enjoy the process of gardening. Remember this is supposed to be fun!

Trust me on this advice, I've learned from my own experience. I've passed up on buying plants I later wanted. I've left weeds until I almost needed a chain saw to cut them down. I've planted too early and lost precious tomato seedlings to frost. I've gotten all twittery thinking about people getting to the garden centers before me and taking all the good stuff.

But I think I've always managed to have fun gardening, Why else would I do it all these years, since I was 5 years old? Why else?

Renovation of a Flower Bed - Completed

In the spring, there are slivers of time when the sun is shining and the ground is dry enough to work when you just have to make time to work in the garden. I took advantage of one of those slivers of time today to finish renovating my perennial flower bed. I had already widened it earlier this spring, and was just waiting for this kind of day to complete the renovation. Here is the bed at approximately at 10:30 this morning, right before I started to dig out the perennials.
Two hours later, I finished digging out all of the plants. That took a bit longer than I had hoped.Two more hours later, around 2:30, the ground was prepared for planting. It didn't take me the whole two hours to do this, as I was taking a lunch break for part of the time. I did not attempt to completely overturn all the soil, I just roughed it up a bit with a spading fork and a hoe, and then added some black top soil on top and raked it all smooth.


Guess what didn't take all that long? That's right, replanting the perennials took me only 45 minutes. This included going around to a few other flower beds and digging up some other perennials that were either crowded out where they were or that I just wanted to put in this bed. And look, I have some left over plants, still on the tarp on the right hand side of this picture.

Here's the finished bed, after adding mulch. I used cocoa hull mulch, which smells yummy, like I was baking a big chocolate cake outside.
By now it was about 3:45 PM and I was starting to fade a bit. Please note that the tall obelisk feature is only there as a place holder. I intend to put a better feature there, but haven't had time to shop for it. Also, those aren't weeds in between the bricks on the patio, that's some sedum and thyme. It won't look so messy once I add the furniture and a few pots.

The leftover perennials were primarily Black-eyed Susans, False Sunflower, Shasta Daisies and some Autumn Joy Sedum. I decided while digging them out that they were not well enough behaved to go back in that bed (except for the Shasta daisies and Autumn Joy Sedum, they are well behaved, but I just had too much of them). So I planted most of them in another perennial bed that is a bit out of control anyway. They'll fit right in. And, yes, some of them ended up in the compost bin. There is only so much room for Black-eyed Susans and there were some geraniums that were too infested with grass to save, especially at the end of a project like this when the gardener is tired. They weren't all that spectacular, anyway, so I hope I don't regret tossing them.

I do work fast on projects like this, but take several little mini breaks. I've been gardening for "awhile", so I know basically what I need to do, and how I want to do it so I just dig in. I also generally work alone, so there are few distractions. I will say that on this project, it would have been nice to have someone there who could have helped with some design decisions. But, there wasn't anyone around, so I designed as I planted as best I could. If something doesn't look right later, it will be fairly easy to dig and replant, right?

If we don't get too much rain this week, next weekend I'll replant the hosta bed that runs along the back of the house and connects in to this bed. The show plant of that bed will be the giant hosta I got from my sister last year.

And finally, before I finish up this chapter on the renovation of this perennial flower bed, I have a few family members to thank for making today possible. They know who they are. I'll make it up to them some day when it is raining!

Purple Velvet

These pansies have been through a lot of seasons since I planted them on March 16th. First, it got really cold and then it warmed up quite a bit, then it got really cold again for several weeks, and then it got warm again. Today it should get to 78 degrees and there won't be a cloud in the sky.

My neighbor commented that these look like purple velvet, so soft that even she, who doesn't garden, reached down to touch them to see if they felt like a soft velvet.

They do.

Where did I get these you ask? From a local grower. I'm not going to be all high and mighty and claim that I've never purchased a plant from a big box store, because I have, plenty of times. But I'm always a little happier with my purchase when I get it from a local grower. The local grower in this case is CourtsYard and Greenhouse, formerly Boston Greenhouse.

The name of this flower? Came in a mixed flat, so it has no name that I know of. That means I get to name it! But wait, why don't some of you who come here to look around give me some ideas for names?

Do Grape Vines Cry?

Knowing when and what to prune is something every gardener has to figure out at some point. We all learn the basics. We observe what works and watch to see what others do. Prune spring flowering shrubs after they’ve bloomed, prune summer/fall flowering shrubs in the spring. Prune trees when the wood isn’t frozen, preferably in late winter. Prune deadwood at any time.

Grapes should also be pruned back in late winter. However, the head gardener here at May Dreams Gardens (me) didn’t prune the grapes in late winter. I did think about it in early March, but then, as is well-documented, it got quite warm and the buds starting to break on the vine, and I decided it might be too late.

Then it got cold again for several weeks and I thought maybe I could prune the grapes anyway, but I didn’t. Now it is warm and nice and sunny again. Almost like summer, except it still gets cool at night.

This afternoon, I was weeding around the grape vines, and a couple of the vines got in my way, so I reached up and cut them off. I figured it wouldn’t hurt the vine, and with all the buds now brown from the cold, I’m not counting on any grapes this year.

Then I proceeded with my weeding and felt a drop of water hit my arm. What was that? Bird droppings? Nope, just water. But it wasn’t raining. Several more drops hit my arm before I looked up to see the grape vine dripping water from where I cut it off. I watched as one drop after another formed. I’ve done a lot of pruning and I've studied plant physiology enough to know basically what's going on with the plant, but I have never seen a cut like that literally drip water.

I guess that means that this ISN’T a good time to prune the grape vines.

Tart of a Tulip

I was startled the other day to find this red tulip blooming in my front flower bed. Goodness sakes, I thought, where did that come from? It was really quite shockingly red, and a bit disturbing in a bed otherwise filled with calm pastel and white spring flowers.

I immediately thought of names for this tulip like Red Harlot or Tulip Tart, neither of which is all that flattering. But really, that is quite RED, is it not?

So, I'm asking myself, where did I get this tulip, in a color I wouldn't normally buy? Where? And what is its real name?

Yes, I have a garden journal and I generally write down what I plant and where, but I failed to do that when I planted bulbs. So I don't know if I planted it last fall, but I must have because I don't think I've seen it before.

Maybe it was a mix-up in the packaging? Maybe this is supposed to be a white or pink or purple tulip? Regardless of how it came to be planted there, I have it now, so I'll let it stay. But I think next year when it blooms, I'm going to cut it and bring it inside right away. After all, I don't want the neighbors to see that tart in my garden.

I'd rather they see tulips like this dark purple one blooming near the red tulip. That's more what I like. It is almost a royal purple, so I'm calling it Purple Queen of the Garden.
Of course, if anyone thinks they know the true names of these tulips, let me know. I usually like to know the real names of my plants, really I do.

Proud Guinevere Makes an Attempt

It doesn't take much warmth and sun to perk up the trees and shrubs that were shivering in the cold last week. And the gardener around here (me) likes the warmer days better, too.

This is one of those trees and shrubs, my crab apple tree, 'Guinevere', attempting to bloom Thursday (April 19th).

Because it was so warm in late March, I thought this tree was going to bloom about two weeks earlier than usual, but instead all the buds literally froze in the cold and the new leaves drooped. It was a sad sight, because I know what might have been. The picture below was taken exactly one year earlier on April 19, 2006.


I did not take a picture of the full tree this year because 'Guinevere' is a proud tree and wouldn't really want her current bedraggled appearance published for all to see. Instead we can remember her beauty from last year and hope for next year.

What I like about 'Guinevere' is that the buds start out pink and then as they open, the flowers turn almost white. And where the branches were grafted on, there's a cozy little place perfect for a bird's nest, but I've only seen a nest there once, a few years ago. This tree is one of my garden favorites!

'Guinevere' sits in the middle of the front flower bed that is now under renovation and needs to be surrounded with just the right flowers for early spring, mid spring, and summer blooms to enhance her beauty. I've got my work cut out for me both in deciding what to plant and then in actually finding those plants and planting them.

I am quite open to suggestions and others' ideas so feel free to suggest what you think should be planted with 'Guinevere'.

Spring Came Back, No Explanation Offered

There is a correlation between weather and how busy one is outside of the garden. I can offer proof. The first part of April, when the weather was cold and rainy, I had all kinds of time to work in the garden, and had to just sit and wait out the weather.

But now that Spring has decided to return, I am as busy as ever and have little time to spend in the garden, at least for a few days.

Did I not mention that Spring had returned on Sunday? It did, still a little wobbly and cool in the mornings, but improving each day. It offered no explanation as to where it was those first few weeks of April, it just came back, and brought with it the woodland violets, which had also disappeared when it got cold again.

And Spring offered no apologies for what its absence did to some of the flowers and trees and shrubs. But I think Spring feels bad about disappearing and is trying to make amends with blue skies, sunshine and temperatures that get closer to perfection each day.

Weekend weather should be outstanding... so it is hard to stay mad at Spring.

If only I wasn't so busy.

Where's Deidre?

It is well-documented that on occasion a gardener can become obsessed with a particular type of flower, like orchids, or daylilies, or tulips.

Once a particular flower obsession sets in, is there a cure?

Do I want a cure for my current tulip obsession? The tulips have done so well in the unseasonably cold April weather that I think they deserve the attention and fuss I've been making over them, don't you?

This pretty little pink tulip is one of those "single tulips" that seem to come up where once I had a whole group of tulips. I was lamenting those single tulips before, but now I don't mind. This is such a pretty little tulip that I think it is better to be alone to show itself off.

But lest you think that all my bulbs are tulips, here are some Star Flowers (Ipheion uniflora) I'm also smitten with. I planted these about eight years ago, and they've been very reliable in coming back and blooming each year.


I like these soft blue flowers so much that I'm going to get a lot more of them to plant this fall, along with the tulips. They are such a nice shade of blue and blue is one color that tulips don't come in, so it will be a nice backdrop to all the pinks and purples and reds and oranges and yellows that I will have in the tulips.

I will also plant more green tulips, like these.
But I do have one problem right now with these green striped tulips.

I can't find them.

Really, I can't remember where I planted them and I haven't found them blooming yet. The variety is 'Deidre' according to the package, which also states they are a late bloomer. So I guess I have some time before I should really wonder too much about where these are.

But if they don't start blooming soon so I can find them, I might be playing a new game of "Where's Deidre?" in my garden in a week or so. Seriously, I can't find figure out where I planted them and I don't see a grouping of 15 tulips that might be these. I hope they weren't just a total no show!

By the way, while I was outside on this beautiful spring evening, looking again for my pretty green tulips, I found this lone late daffodil. I don't know its name, so I've dubbed it "Spring Sunshine Rose Daffodil", because that center reminds me of a rose and it is yellow.

Overwhelming

I woke up yesterday to find that several people had already posted about their April 15th blooms for the 3rd monthly Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day and new posts were being added all day long and even today. I don't have a final count but I'd guess somewhere around 40 bloggers showed us their blooms! That alone was quite overwhelming, to have so many people participate in bloom day, but then seeing what some people have blooming in their gardens right now... wow! There are some colorful gardens out there beyond my Zone 5 early (mid?) spring world. I tried my best to visit each blog with a post for bloom day and leave a comment. If I missed you, let me know. A big "Thank you" to all who participated.

And then, I was totally overwhelmed when I checked out Colleen's In the Garden Online blog and found out that I was nominated for some 2007 Mouse & Trowel awards. Like many readers of this blog, I nominated my favorite blogs and hoped to get a nod in a category myself. I ended up being nominated in three categories: Most Innovation in Garden Blogging, Garden Blogger You'd Most Like to Have As a Neighbor, and Garden Blog of the Year.

I've been back to Colleen's site a couple of times to double and triple check that it was this blog, May Dreams Gardens, that was nominated and not May You Dream About Gardens, or May Gardens Dream or Gardens May Dream or some closely named blog that I was not aware of. But the links all lead back here.

First, and foremost, thank you to all who nominated me! I am very appreciation of being nominated in these three categories. You can go here to vote now for your favorite in all the categories and if you like what you see here, I'd love to have your vote.

After you've voted, I hope those of you who didn't participate in the Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day yesterday will join us either yet this month or next month by posting what is blooming in your garden on the 15th. If you post today or even tomorrow, we won't say anything, we'll just assume you spent yesterday working on your tax returns. Even if you don't post about your blooms, check back here when you can because I am planning some special posting days to give everyone a chance to show off more of their gardens and garden related items, like hoes, in their blogs.

And finally, before I finish up this post and go check those nominations again, I'd also like to invite everyone to join us in the Garden Bloggers' Book Club. You can go to this blog to get to links to all the posts about how to participate.

Thank you again for the nominations, wonderful comments, and great support for my blog, May Dreams Gardens.

Carol

<

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day - April 2007

Happy Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day from May Dreams Gardens!

Here’s what's blooming today in my gardens.

Really in Bloom:

Tulips (lots of tulips!)
Pansies and violas
Grape Hyacinth (Muscari armeniacum)
Star Flowers (Ipheion uniflorum)
Periwinkle (Vinca minor)
Striped Squill (Puschkinia scilloides)
Lenten Roses (Helleborus orientalis) pinkish-rose, and white
Korean Spice Viburnum (Viburnum carlesii)

Not necessarily welcome, but blooming anyway

Taraxacum officinale (A lovely yellow flowering, low growing plant in the Aster family also know as Dandelions)
Lamium amplexicaule (An early blooming member of the mint family, generally the first thing to bloom in my garden…Henbit)

In Bud (I'm not sure if some of these buds will actually bloom, due to the cold temperatures!)

White Flowering Lilac (Syringa vulgaris ‘White Angel’)
Wayfaring Tree Viburnum (Viburnum lantana ‘Mohican’)
Blackhaw Viburnum (Viburnum prunifolium)
Dwarf Fothergila (Fothergilla gardenii)
Snowball Bush (Viburnum opulus ‘Sterile’)
Chives (Allium schoenoprasum)
Meyer Lilac (Syringa meyeri)
Miss Kim Lilac (Syringa patula ‘Miss Kim’)
Crab Apple (Malus ‘Guinevere’)
Apple Tree (Malus sp.)
Variegated Kerria (Kerria japonica ‘Variegata’)

Fading flowers (They’ve seen better days)

Red Bud Tree (Cercis canadensis)
Daffodils (I found just one sorta kinda blooming, so it counts)
Hyacinth (I only had 2, anyway)

Flowers that should be blooming but disappeared in the cold. (I think they’ll come back next week once it warms up.)

Wild violets
False Forget-me-not (Brunnera macrophylla)

And a Happy Surprise

Variegated Spurge (Euphorbia polychroma ‘Variegata’)

Picture Gallery

The variegated spurge... I didn't expect to find it blooming, so that is why it is a happy surprise. You can see from the water on the leaves that the weather was not all that great for walking around the garden to see what was blooming, but I'm glad I "toughed it out" and went out there anyway. Otherwise I would not have noticed the flowering spurge.

And my tulips.
I think I heard one of them ask why they were getting their picture taken again, and on a cloudy day. I have taken a lot of pictures of these tulips because they have survived a lot of cold nights and days in the last few weeks. All the tulips have!

The Lenten Rose. I love that little bit of green inside the flowers.
And I know you'll all be polite and not notice how some of the petals have turned a little brown at the edges, presumably because of the cold weather.

Some dandelions.
Ever seen foliage like that on dandelions? Me, either. Actually, these dandelions are trying to grow in the exact same space as a daylily. To get rid of the dandelions I'm going to have to dig both plants up, divide the daylilies and toss the dandelions.

And look what I found when I was looking for blooms. A plant that, along with its other skin-irritating buddies, has its own genus because no other plant wants to be associated with them...

Toxicodendron radicans, Poison Ivy. I wasn't wearing gloves when I saw it, so I left it to pull another day. It's right up by the house next to a drainage pipe connected to a downspout. Normally, the pipe is all covered with mulch, which reminds me that I need to re-mulch a few areas!

Following the special April 2007 rules, I pulled this picture of my Red bud tree from my archives. It was quite beautiful in mid-April last year as compared to this year!


Finally, I experimented with using my scanner as a camera and captured these images of my violas and pansies. The idea came from several posts from Kathy at Cold Climate Gardening. This first scan is a nice orderly row of violas and pansies for those who like order in their worlds. I agree, it would be more orderly if I had left off that large pansy, then I'd have sort of a 'natural progression' of color.
There, like that. But now there are four violas, which isn't an odd number, and we are all taught to plant in odd numbers!
Oh, well, moving on... For those who don't mind mixing it up a little, here's another picture. I chose these flowers because they were in a pot on my front porch, making them the only dry flowers around on this gray, rainy, sleety, cold weekend. For the black cloth covering, I used a black blouse. It's one I bought a while ago, but it still has the tag on it, so I haven't worn it yet. I knew it would come in handy for something.

And that's what's blooming at May Dreams Gardens on April 15, 2007!

What's blooming in your garden? Please leave a comment to let us know when you have posted for Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day so we can find you, visit your blog, and make a fuss over your flowers, no matter how few you have. And if you don't have a blog or the time to write a post, leave your list in a comment here. All are welcome and encouraged to participate!

“We can have flowers nearly every month of the year.” – Elizabeth Lawrence

Hoosier Bloggers and Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day Reminder

Have you noticed that we have a few more Hoosier Garden Bloggers this spring? (You do know what a Hoosier is, don't you...someone who comes from or lives in Indiana. Not to be confused with a "hurrying hoosier", the mascot for Indiana University. We Boilermakers do not like to be called that kind of hoosier...)

There's Vonlafin, Gardening With God, who gardens in the Lafayette area and Robin, Robin's Nesting Place who is somewhere around Indianapolis, and Steven, Granny Gruner's Garden, who is also somewhere in the Indianapolis area. We already had Earth Girl blogging at The Good Earth in northeast Indiana and also Girl Gone Gardening up in Portage. And Earth Girl has started a new blog for the Gene Stratton Porter State Historic Site.

Both Robin and Girl Gone Gardening are from other places, so they are trying to figure out some of the tricks of gardening in Indiana, like how do you know when the spring frost free date really is? (I'll tell you in July when the frost free date was this year!)

Any other Hooser garden bloggers out there? Let me know who you are. I'd love to add you to my special list on my side bar of Indiana-based gardeners .

And for all gardening bloggers, wherever you are, don't forget that tomorrow, April 15th, is Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day. Finally, something to like about April 15th other than taxes being due! I'll post my entry early, early on April 15th, then when you've posted about what is blooming in your garden, come on over and leave a comment so everyone can find you and come visit your blog.

I'm looking forward to seeing lots of blooms, especially in areas not living through this fifth season, Wring.

I Got the Vase!

Sometimes you have to give up something to get something. And I had to give up quite a lot so I could get the one family heirloom I really wanted, this purple vase.

Yes, I have the purple vase. The origins of this vase? I'm not really sure. My mom's mother had it, but we aren't sure if she had it for long or got it from other family or just where she got it or how old it is. Somehow it just came to be in the family, and I was determined it would be passed along to me.

I know my siblings wanted it only because they knew I wanted it, so my mom held on to it while we bickered and bartered for years over who was to get it.

And finally I got it by giving up an antique clock. Isn't it a pretty vase? Wasn't it worth it?

I have another family keepsake that I'm willing to pass along to all my sisters and brother, without them having to give up anything except a little space in a sunny corner of their house. But so far, only my oldest sister has taken me up on it. It is starts of the Night Blooming Cereus, (Epiphyllum oxipetalum), that came from my aunt's night bloomer that came from my Dad's night bloomer. Can't get much more family than that!

However, I think my siblings are just a little concerned about how big mine has gotten, and that if they take a start of it, theirs will get that big, too. But my aunt's didn't get that big, I tell them, and show them, because I have my aunt's night bloomer as of last summer. She asked me if I would take it because she couldn't handle it any longer. So I took it because you can't throw away a plant like a night bloomer. You just can't.

When I was transporting my aunt's night bloomer to my house, a branch broke off, and rather than toss it, I started six more plants from it. I'm not sure why I started six more night bloomers because I don't have room for more of them. I guess the plant just cast a spell on me or something.

So anyway, my oldest sister finally took one of the starts last week and I now I'm waiting for my other siblings to claim theirs, once they realize that this plant is also a family heirloom!

When my sister took one of these starts, in its cute little 4" pot, she asked when it would bloom. Ummm... not this summer, not next summer. Maybe in 3 years, if she is lucky and figures out the tricks to getting one of these to bloom, but that would be a long shot and that would make me mad if hers bloomed that soon. I've had mine for 20 years and I am just now starting to understand it, and what makes it bloom. It has bloomed 3 times in those 20 years.

Here's my night blooming cereus. Really do you think this is too big for a houseplant?

Because if you take care of it, you get this!

A family heirloom you would not soon forget!

Wring, Sprinter, or Hate-pril?

Just a few days ago, I was lamenting that if my tulips choose to come back after the first year, it was usually as lone tulips, even though I planted them in groups. Then I wrote about how thrilled I was that the tulips were performing in spite of the cold temperatures, so I was going to plant tulip bulbs every fall to express my gratitude that they even bloomed at all. And now I am even more enthralled with tulips because this lovely group of tulips pictured above started blooming today and IT IS A GROUP I PLANTED TWO YEARS AGO. Sorry for all CAPS there, but given the way April has treated us in the midwest (and elsewhere), I am pretty excited to see these tulips at all, and then to see that they are a whole group and they came back a second year. I'm sure you understand. I'm going to plant a lot of tulips this coming fall. I'm thinking about starting a tulip appreciation society. I'm putting tulips on my top 10 favorite flowers list. I'm going to write that ode to tulips that I posted about earlier.

And there is other good news to report. Look at this Korean Spice Viburnum (Viburnum carlesii). It might look a bit scraggly at first glance, but look beyond that to see the blooms today.

Oddly enough, on the left side as you look at the plant, the blooms are dead and brown. On the right side, near the top, the blooms are hanging, but somewhat blooming, and closer to the bottom (where presumably the blooms were kept warm by radiant heat from the ground), the blooms are almost normal. It's not a total loss! I just hope some of those blooms hang on until Sunday so I can include them in my Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day post for April 15th.

This April has been almost a fifth season, after that big-time warm up in late March. Maybe we should name this new season? My aunt said that cold weather when the dogwoods are blooming is called Dogwood Winter. However, in this case, the dogwoods were not yet blooming when it turned cold again. So how about calling this newly discovered fifth season Wring, as in we are wringing our hands with worry about what this cold is doing to all the plants? Or maybe Sprinter, as in get this season over with quickly? Or how about Hate-pril, as in we hate this month of April? Let me know your favorite name for this new season, then I'll let the people know who name the seasons, once I figure out who they are.

Seeds and Blogging

How are everyone's seeds sprouting? We had quite a time this past winter visiting with one another, online, learning that we are not alone in our obsession with seeds, didn't we? And now I assume that like me, many of you now have trays of seedlings that you are carefully tending, while patiently waiting for the frost free date, whenever that is for you.

I decided it was high time I posted a picture of a few of my seedlings to show you that I really do start all my vegetable garden plants from seed. On the left are several varieties of peppers, bell peppers, hot peppers, and mild peppers. On the left are my 'maters. I love to smell the leaves! Pure summer in that smell! And every day I wave my hand gently through those tomato seedlings because I read somewhere (or someone told me) that this imitates the wind and causes the stems to be thicker and less spindly.

And, in between is a little flat of Viola cornuta 'Arkwright Ruby'. I started those a bit late, so we'll see how they do.

Not shown... my eggplant seedlings, more viola seeds (covered because they need darkness to germinate), and oh, yes, some seedlings for Delphinium elatum 'Foerster's Hybrid'. Delphiniums have never done well for me, but from what I've read, this could be because I didn't have a good variety. But 'Foerster's Hybrid' could be just the right variety of Delphiniums for a midwest gardener. And I now have a dozen or so seedlings that are just getting big enough for me to pot them up to individual containers.

I read about these particular Delphiniums on Cold Climate Gardening when Kathy Purdy posted about the December book selection of the Garden Bloggers' Book Club. Remember the December book selection? It was My Favorite Plant edited by Jamaica Kincaid.

Anyway, Kathy chose to write about two chapters, and one of the chapters was the essay by Thomas Fischer about Delphiniums, and that's where I first read about the Foerster Delphiniums and decided that I should try to grow some from seed. If Kathy hadn't written about this chapter and these Delphiniums on her blog, I don't know if I would have every found out about them, or even thought to look for a better Delphinium for my garden

And that's what I like about blogging. So many good ideas on all those blogs, just waiting to be discovered. So much experience from different bloggers, willingly shared with anyone who comes along and reads the blog or posts a question. So much affirmation that we gardeners are not alone in our obsessions with seeds or compost or whatever plant is on our mind that day. So many pictures of wonderful gardens, plants I'll never have, sights I normally wouldn't see.

Where else, and how else, can you get all that as a gardener?

Rewards of Gardening

I feel like I should write an ode to tulips. While other flowers and shrubs and trees have succumbed to the freezing temperatures, the tulips have carried on as though it is no big deal to be frozen at night and then thawed out each day. I don't care if they behave like annuals, I'll plant them every fall just to get this kind of display in the spring, because at least for that first year, they are reliable. This is one of the orange tulips. And below is one of the pinkish-purple tulips still blooming.


I finally found the packages for my tulips and it turns out, ha ha, hmmm, that I should have expected this pinkish-purple color because it is exactly what is on the package. I apologize to the tulip and the tulip grower! But I won't apologize for not expecting this next color starting to bloom. Look, it's red! These will go well with the orange tulips, don't you think?
After looking at the packages, it appears that I should also expect some green and white striped tulips to come up someplace. I don't know if they will be in this bed or someplace else. Honestly, I don't remember where I planted them. I'm slipping in my record keeping!

But I did keep a record of when I planted the early vegetables (March 17th), and I labeled each row. I checked under the row cover this evening and found lettuce, radishes, spinach, onions and peas all sprouting. The beets did not make it, so I'll have to replant those. I'll do that this weekend when I thin out the lettuce.
I also need to figure out how I am going to keep these all covered so the rabbits don't eat everything. The onions are already bent over because they are hitting the cloth and can't grow taller. And once the peas get taller, I need to set it up somehow so that they can climb the trellis that the cover is draped over in the picture above, and still be covered. I know I have to do this because there is another bed in the garden where I also planted peas, but didn't cover them, and there is not ONE single pea plant in that bed. Not a single one. I can only assume that the rabbits ate them all.

And the rewards of gardening? Look below, I found an Easter egg. I can't believe this one wasn't found. Really, some of my nieces and nephews have been hunting eggs for years and have no excuse for not finding this one.

And then I found another egg! Those nieces and nephews are really slipping. You don't suppose it has anything to do with hunting for eggs when it was in the high 30's outside, do you? They were really hustling out there. But would either of these be a money egg?
The first one was all candy. Shoot...

But then, Jackpot! A money egg. $1.05.
See, gardening has its rewards! You always find something nice in the garden on a sunny evening. Maybe it is just a pretty orange tulip with the sun shining on it, or maybe it is a leftover Easter egg with money in it, but you'll always find some reward for your efforts in the garden.

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day - Special April "Rules"

This has indeed been an unusual spring around here and everywhere.

I'm kind of afraid (not quite ready) to actually go outside and look closely at my plants and flowers as I'm not sure what I'll find after what seems like night after night of below freezing temperatures after that big warm up in March.

Plus, it is still cold out there, as in 'winter coat" cold. Like a lot of people, I thought I'd put my winter coat away for the season a few weeks ago, but I had to get it out again on Friday, along with my gloves. Ugh, it seems so heavy!

There are some bright spots, of course. There are always bright spots in every garden! I picked a few tulips and daffodils early Sunday morning while they were still kind of frozen, put them in a vase, and they opened up quite nicely.

But there are some cold-related issues in the garden that I'm going to have to face eventually, once things warm up. Like what's going to happen with these crabapple blooms? I see this tree every morning and it seems to droop a bit more each day. I don't hold out much hope of it blooming like it did last year. Geez, it is just full of potential buds, too.
What will I have to post about on Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day for April, which is coming up on this Sunday, the 15th? I think everyone knows how this bloom day works, as this will be our 3rd month to do it, but for those who don't know, here's the run down.

On the 15th of the month, go out into your garden and make note of everything in bloom (or the top bloomers) and list all your blooms on your blog. Pictures are optional. The idea is to compare from north to south, east to west, and from across the ocean, what is blooming where. After you've posted, come here to this blog, and I'll have a post where you can leave a comment so everyone can find you.

Easy, right? Many of us were so eagerly anticipating April's Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day, especially after that warm up in March. We were going to have lists galore of blooms because it is finally spring, and we still might, because we have to remain optimistic. You can never tell what plants will do, given a day or two of warmth!

But just in case the plants don't make that much progress after being frozen for a week, I've got some special one-time "rules" for April. If it is just real bad in your garden, or if it is still cold, or you just can't face your garden by this weekend, go back through your pictures and garden journals from last spring and tell us what would have been blooming if winter had not returned in April. Or tell us what was just about ready to bloom before it was frozen out and show us a picture or two. We'll visit and offer sympathies and make a nice comment about what might have been and talk about how wonderful May will be.

Because May is our favorite gardening month around here. Did you know that?

This evening, since I had to go out and water the pansies and violas and had my coat on anyway, I got up the gumption to look around the garden to see what was going on.

Below is my apple tree. It's a Red Delicious (I think). I can't tell if these buds will still break out and bloom or if they are frozen. Anyone know from the picture? I did read a story about a local apple grower who estimates he lost 50% of his apple crop and the other 50% isn't going to be worth much. His family has had their orchard for 80 plus years and he wonders if it is all worth it, when something like this happens and pretty much wipes them out for the year. I hope they stay with it. They also sell produce in the summer, which should help some, I hope.

This is a common lilac (Syringa vulgaris) in my neighbor's side yard, over by my yard. The leaves look bad, but I wonder if that flower is still going to bloom. It looks nice and bright, but I've noticed several flowers look brigher when frozen in time.

In contrast, I don't hold out much hope for my white-flowering Lilac (Syringa vulgaris 'White Angel'). The other lilac is in a more protected location between our houses. This white-flowering lilac is out in the open.

It is supposed to warm up this week, could be in the high 50's, low 60's by Friday, and tonight is supposed to be the last night of below freezing temperatures for awhile. Perhaps we'll soon have our spring back!

But if spring is slow in returning, we will have the Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day "special one time rules for April" to help us through it all.

Green Thumb Sunday - Frozen Grape Hyacinth

The Easter Bunny came in the cold and left quite a few eggs in the back yard, including this green plastic egg next to some frozen Grape Hyacinth. I think the Grape Hyacinth look much brighter than normal in their frozen state, don't you? Oh, and thank you for not noticing or mentioning all that grass growing in there with them. Tsk, tsk, I do have some work to do in that flower bed!

We think all the hunters found all the eggs in "the big hunt", but any left hidden are mine to keep if I find them. And some of those eggs had money in them! I hope to find any that were left hidden before the garden fairies do. Who knows what the garden fairies might do if they got a hold of some actual money to spend!

Join

Happy Easter

Happy Easter from
May Dreams Gardens

See the land, her Easter keeping,

Rises as her Maker rose.

Seeds, so long in darkness sleeping,

Burst at last from winter snows.

Earth with heaven above rejoices...

~Charles Kingsley

Do They Just Like to Grow By Themselves?

See, I plant tulips in groups, in spite of evidence to the contrary here and there in my garden.

The first year they come up in their groups. Then in the second and later years, I just get a few single tulips scattered here and there. I must pay attention the next time someone writes about which tulip varieties reliably come back each year in the midwest.

Until then, I have a lot of single, lonely tulps scattered here and there in the garden.

This pink one has a lot of foliage around it, but no other tulips nearby.

I think this yellow tulip is afraid of those hardy cactus back behind it. I'm sure it just wants to bloom and then get out of there. Those cactus can be kind of scary. I need to remove some of them because they are threatening some other nearby plants, too. This tulip is standing tall, but standing all alone, too. As with all my tulips, I don't know its official name. I'll call it "Lonely Pink Blush", if anyone asks for a name.

And here's a final single, lone tulip. This one has a Korean Spice Viburnum (Virburnum carlesii) nearby getting ready to bloom, keeping it from being too lonely.

These pictures were all taken "pre-freeze", except for the picture of the group of tulips, which I took Friday afternoon, after they had been exposed to two nights of below freezing temperatures. Post freeze, the tulips are hanging in there, putting up a good fight!

Improving Your Image As A Gardener

Wait, come back, don't click the "X" and move on! This isn't another post about the weather and the freezing temperatures and what that has done to trees, like my crabapple, and shrubs and flowers that were coaxed to bloom early by unseasonably warm days. It's not, I promise!

Instead, this post is about advice for gardeners, for anyone who has to garden in public places like their front yard.

The other day, I caught one of my neighbors bending over with her backside to the street and I realized that she was not aware that bending over at the waist like that, in addition to not being good for your back if you are lifting something, causes your lower backside to appear double in size.

And that's my advice today.

Never bend over at the waist with your back facing the street.

It gives all the neighbors a broad view. This applies to women and men both. After all, no one wants to look like one of those garden cutouts that is supposed to look like a lady bending over exposing her bloomers or a man bending over with low riding pants.

Positively... Cold, But What About 2002, 2005, and 1925?

Let's look at the positives first. After a night of freezing temperatures and a cloudy, cold day, the tulips don't look so bad. They are all upright and not too much clashing orange, yet.

The star magnolia (Magnolia stellata) was in full bloom last week, when I took this picture, so it was just about finished with its big spring show before the cold hit and I got to enjoy it for a week or so. That's a good thing because...

... after last night, it doesn't look so good. It looks quite miserable.

And this is a picture of the crabapple blossoms after the cold night and day, taken at about the same spot where I took a picture yesterday to put on yesterday's post. It's not like the blooms are black or anything... yet.


But this lilac (Syringa vulgaris 'White Angel') doesn't look at all happy with the cold. I'm not expecting it to bloom wildly this year. It is a white variety and has never been what I would call a "big bloomer" anyway. (By the way, that white cloth covered area behind it is NOT my attempt to protect the peas and lettuce and all from cold, it is an attempt to protect them from the bunnies.)

And here are some perennial daisies of some kind. Once things warm up again next week, I'll need to trim these up a bit along with other perennials nipped by the cold , and they'll come out of it all right.
This has happened before. Based on my gardening journal, we had similar weather in 2002. I don't think it got quite as warm in late March that year, so plants weren't quite as far along, but it got very cold in early April, and we had a frost on May 19, 2002. That last frost in May wiped out my tomatoes and peppers and I had to go and re-buy all new. Now I always wait until after May 19th to plant the vegetable garden, even though our frost free date is listed as May 10th.

In 2005, on both May 2nd and May 3rd, temperatures dipped below freezing in the early morning. I remember when that happened, too. I should, it was just two years ago. We weren't without flowers and leaves and butterflies and bees that summer, so everything and everyone pulled through.

And finally, my grandmother wrote in her diary that they had frost on May 25, 1925 in Indianapolis. Now THAT would be bad.

Do Pinkish-Purple and Orange Match?

Crabapple getting ready to bloom...My neighbor mowed his grass every day from last Wednesday through Sunday… five days in a row. I think that each time he mowed, he lowered the setting on his lawn mower so that he is now mowing at nearly the lowest setting you can mow at and not be scraping dirt. Why else would he mow every day like that?

Contrast that with my mowing technique. I mowed at the highest setting on Friday, then on Monday I mowed again at the next to the highest setting and that’s the setting I’ll mow at for the rest of the season, until the very end in November. Then if I have another episode like this spring when the grass grows faster than I can get out to mow it, I’ll always have the highest setting to use to get caught up. It's the emergency setting! But that rarely happens because I am one of those gardeners who likes to mow the lawn.

But lawns are hardly the gardening topic on everyone’s minds today. What’s on our minds is “we’ve lost of our Spring!” Has anyone seen it? It was here Monday, 74 degrees, sunny, just about as perfect a day as you could ask for. Sometime yesterday afternoon it disappeared. Now we are facing record low temperatures, freezing temperatures in the low 20's and high teens.

As a precursor to losing Spring, I lost my sunglasses temporarily on Monday. These aren’t just any sunglasses, these are the prescription sunglasses I got specifically for gardening. They are all plastic frames, without those plastic nose pieces that get all gunky and dirty with sweat. (Hmmm… perhaps buying gardening sunglasses is one sign of being a gardening addict? I need to post about that.) I wore the sunglasses when I was mowing the front yard. Then I took a break and when I went back out to mow the back yard, I couldn’t find my sunglasses. I retraced my steps to see where I left them, but I couldn’t find them. Then when I started to mow without them, I found them.

They were on top of my head.

I wish it could be that easy to find our Spring again. All day at work people asked me what they should do about the coming freeze tonight, tomorrow night, the next night... at least four days of it. My answer? There really isn’t anything you can do. You can’t cover all the trees and shrubs that are blooming or have leafed out. Besides, covering plants really only helps if there is going to be a frost, a light frost. It isn't going to help with a freeze.

You can cut tulips and daffodils and other flowers and bring them inside to enjoy.

And you can be thankful you don’t own an orchard around here, with apples trees getting ready to bloom and don’t complain if locally grown fruit is more expensive this fall. The top picture is of my crabapple tree this evening, getting ready to bloom, and look at those pretty, green leaves. After a few nights of freezing temperatures, I’m not expecting much bloom. I’ll just have to find a picture from last year and reminisce about how pretty it was and how it will be “next year”. Apple growers won't have that option to wait until next year.

But if you live around here or anywhere in the Midwest and you “fell for” the early warm Spring and planted something like tomatoes outside, you probably don’t really understand gardening. I don’t mean to be harsh, but really, the first thing you should know about gardening around here before you buy a tomato plant is that the frost free date is generally around MAY 10TH, maybe later, even if the temperatures are in the 70's in late March.

Really, I saw some tomato plants for sale at the local Meijer this past weekend, along with pepper plants. Not sure if they had annual flowers. Is that dishonest to sell those around here so early? Would they take them back if they froze? Back in college, I was told that growers of bedding plants actually counted on early shoppers having to re-buy their annuals after the annuals were killed by frost in late April. They called the early crop the "fools' crop". (If you are in the bedding plant business today and take offense at that statement, I'm just telling you what I was told 25 years ago. Feel free to comment and correct, nicely.)

And to conclude, these are some of my tulips. I am deciding if I should cut a few and bring them inside. As you can see tulips of another color are starting to bloom.

It is fairly obvious in this picture that this second group of tulips clashes with the first tulips blooming. It is more obvious in person. These were ALL supposed to be pastels. This second one is orange, which I don’t consider to be a pastel. Now I have hot pinkish-purple tulips and orangey tulips in the same flower bed. I would like all my tulips to bloom, but if the freezing temperature prevents this color mis-match from being real obvious, that might be a good thing. Anyway, remind me to stop buying cheap bags of tulip bulbs labeled "pastels" and order some good bulbs from a “real bulb company”!

Oh, and I've just decided I'm not cutting these tulips to bring them inside because they have very short stems and I don't think they'd look much better in a vase, though I could separate the colors into different rooms that way.

That's all I got for today. Thanks for all your kind thoughts and commiserations as we revisit winter. We whine and worry, but we know it is temporary and most of the plants will recover in time.

Now I think I need to go get a warm blanket to cover me, the gardener. It's cold out there!

The Accidental Project

My intention this spring was to complete just one major project, which was to renovate a perennial bed that wraps around the patio and extends across the back of the house. I posted about that project here and here, and a few other times. Many people suggested that I add some kind of garden statue or feature in the inset of the patio. A great idea! I’m still trying to figure out what that should be. But as you can tell from the picture above, I clearly have some time to shop for a garden feature before the ground dries out and I’ll be able to dig out the perennials, amend the soil and replant.

I thought I was getting close on this ground being tillable, but then we had a big storm move through this afternoon and dump all kinds of rain and hail on us. And as the storm moved on to the east, it took with it our spring temperatures in the 70’s and left behind expected highs in the 50’s. We could even have some snow flurries in a few days, and we will have a few frosty mornings.

In the meantime, as you may recall from some other posts, while I was waiting for this area to dry out, I got all rambunctious and cut back that whole row of spireas along my front side walk. I posted about it here, and a few other times, and votes were like 20 – 0 to not let them grow back there, and to re-do that bed. I agree on moving the shrubs and am ready to re-do that area, I just hadn’t quite planned to do it at the same time I was working on the other perennial bed. I’m now referring to this as my accidental project.

Ever feel like you are digging yourself a big hole and it keeps getting deeper? Wait, we're gardeners, of course we dig holes and they get deeper, that’s the whole idea of digging! How about “ever start several projects and wonder if you could finish them all”? My style is more “one project at a time”, but I’m in pretty deep on both of these projects so it is too late to turn back now!

Not that I mind, I like to plant and re-plant.

But I’m going to need some cooperation from Mother Nature, soon. See below, the spirea are starting to sprout. I want to move them soon. I need to move them soon if I am to save them. But the soil needs to dry out, a lot.

Maybe if I set up fans to blow across those beds they would dry out faster, like when a basement gets wet, they set up fans to blow out the humidity and moisture. Or would that be like trying to heat/cool the outdoors by leaving your doors open and the furnace/air conditioner running? My neighbors would really have something to talk about if they saw that going on.

Any other ideas?

Red Bud Blooms and Green Gloves

Look at that. The red bud tree (Cercis canadensis) is blooming nearly a full two weeks earlier this year than last year. I wonder what will happen on Thursday when we are supposed to go below freezing again?

I'm not the kind of gardener who runs about covering plants in spring or fall. In the fall, when it's over, it's over. In the spring, I wouldn't have enough covering for everything. I just try to make sure that I don't plant annuals and tender vegetable plants until I'm confident that we won't have any more frost. Anything else that blooms early is on its own.

I am the kind of gardener to do my own work in the garden. None of this "hold your drink in one hand and with the other hand point and tell the man where to dig" kind of gardening for me. EAL posted on her blog yesterday about a pair of gardening gloves that she got as a gift that are perfect for that kind of gardening. I saw her pictures of those gloves and thought of the book several of us read in February, Two Gardeners: Katharine S. White & Elizabeth Lawrence: A Friendship in Letters and the caption under a picture of Katharine standing there in her dress and heels that stated 'she never dressed down to the garden". I would imagine that those gloves were just the kind that Katharine might wear.

As for me, I wear a variety of gloves, in all shades of green, and here they are:

From top left... those are two new pair of gloves that I've just started to break in this spring. The first pair have leather palms, the next pair is the kind where they dip the finger tips in some kind of latex-plastic something which makes it easier to weed with them on. I bought those to replace the ones I lost in the vegetable garden. I lost them because sometimes I take off my gloves to work barehanded, lay the gloves down, and "poof" they disappear.

The next pair (center top) are my old leather palm gloves ready for retirement. You can't see in the picture, but they have holes in them. The top row ends with some worthless cloth pair of gloves that didn't make it two days in the garden and another pair of leather palmed gloves that I keep in the trunk of my car in case I am someplace and get the urge to garden (help dig up a plant someone offers to give me from their garden.)

From bottom left... I loved those green suede gloves, and I still do, but I can't wear them any more. I thought they were so thick that I could pull out some hardy cactus with them. They weren't. Now they are just full of cactus pricklies, and even washing them didn't get those pricklies out. But I can't bring myself to throw them out. We had some good days together, me and those gloves

The next pair, I don't know when I use them, probably when it is cold and I am mowing, like it will be at the end of this week. The next pair are some old gloves, well worn and retired. And the last little stack is of some cloth gloves I got as gifts that I know won't last two days on my hands working in the garden.

And not a one of these pairs of gloves are monogrammed. And none of them are pink or purple. What do YOUR gloves look like?

Daffodil Day (Narcisuss Diem)

One benefit of mowing the lawn is it makes you go all around everything and see things that you might not otherwise see in your garden. Saturday while I was mowing, I noticed that it is the peak of daffodil season. So I declare today to be Daffodil Day in my garden, or for those who prefer botanical names, it is Narcisuss Diem

I've taken a few pictures of my daffodils to post, but alas, they will have to live with nicknames that I gave them as I don't know their true variety names. I seem to have a mental block about keeping records of bulbs planted in the fall. Perhaps that is because as soon as I keep track of all the tulip varieties, the tulips disappear, never to return, or only to return as a leaf or two. So I don't bother keeping track of the names of any fall planted bulbs. (That's a better reason than me being just lazy!)

But daffodils are far more reliable than tulips for returning each year here in the Midwest, so from now on, if, when, I plant more daffodils, I'm going to keep track of the varieties.

In the meantime, if you know the real names of any of the daffodils I've pictured below, please let me know!

And now... The Daffodils...

These first daffodils are more suited to a rock garden setting. They have very narrow petals, and don't even look all that much like daffodils, except I know they are because of the foliage. For some reason they remind me of a stressed out, harried person with their hair all wild, so I'll call them "Harried".
Here's a pretty yellow and white daffodil. It sort of reminds me of a fried egg. How's that for a variety name? "Fried Eggs"
And of course I have yellow daffodils. That's what generally comes in those big bags that scream out "50 daffodils for $5.99" or something like that, and they won't be silenced until you put them in your shopping cart. Then you get home and walk around the garden trying to remember where you have already planted daffodils, looking for a spot or two for a few more. So I'll call these "Yellow Screamers".

Now this little beauty (a bit blurry, sorry about that), is what caught my eye Saturday and prompted me to go around and look more closely at all the daffodils. I'm sure it has a good and proper variety name, lost to me unless I want to pour over bulb catalogs looking for it. I'll just call it "Pink Lips", even though it is more of a coral color. It reminds me of a pale, old lady with too much lipstick in the wrong shade of pink.
And this one is almost pure white, with just a hint of yellow. I think it was white and the garden faires painted it up a bit, so I'll call it "Fairy Yellow". They probably would have finished painting it all yellow, but garden fairies are easily distracted, party a lot, and don't always finish what they start.

The garden fairies must have missed this one because it is pure white. Now where did I get this one? I have no idea! I don't recall planting daffodils recently in the place where this one is, so I must have planted it several years ago. And I don't remember seeing a white daffodil in the garden before so I'll call this one "The Ghost". Another name might be "Icing" because I think it looks like it is made out of white icing. I really like it.

It is a good thing I noticed the daffodils when I did because they are fading just as fast as these tulips shown below are starting to bloom and steal the show away from them. These are the tulips I planted last fall in my new flower bed.

I planted these on November 4th, but I didn't keep track of the varieties (see above). I just wrote in my blog post that I hoped to have 4 - 6 weeks of bloom because I purchased early, mid and late varieties in various pastel shades. So far, I have these hot pink tulips blooming. I agree, not exactly pastel, are they? I'll have to keep an eye on this bed to see how much bloom I really get.

Once the tulips finish blooming in early May, these perennials will be ready to bloom. I'll give you a minute to guess what these are...

These are ... I'll tell you tomorrow because I know some of you are good guessers and you'll guess right and that will leave you with a good feeling about how smart you are about flowers. If you guess it wrong, I'll kindly reject your comment and secretly let you know (if I know your email address), so you won't be "outed" for not knowing. So, you have nothing to lose by guessing, and a good feeling about yourself to gain!

Happy Daffodil Day
Carpe Narcisuss Diem

Major Update on Boulder in My Garden

I’ve posted before about the large boulder in the back yard. I joked in that post that maybe it was a meteor or radioactive or something like that, instead of just being a great big boulder that they dug up when they dug my crawl space, and kindly left for me to figure out what I should do with it.

Well, now, as it turns out, this might be a special boulder.

A week or so ago, I got a phone call from someone at the Geological Service confirming my address and that I had this big boulder in my back yard. Then they started talking about seeing something on a satellite image of my yard. Apparently, they study those satellite images to find out more than we think, and noticed this boulder in my yard. What struck them, they said, was that there seemed to be some kind of energy coming from it. They asked if they could come and take a closer look, and I, of course, said yes.

I did ask them at that time if they thought the boulder was dangerous to be around, and they said “probably not”. I didn’t know how to take that, and so decided until they came to take a closer look, I was going to stay away from it!

They arrived the next day and brought with them some impressive looking equipment to take a closer look at the boulder. I was relieved that they were not wearing any protective gear or radioactive suits.

I took them back to the boulder and they proceeded to take measurements, tap it, photograph it, and, with my permission, chip off a few samples. I asked what they thought and with some excitement, they said they thought perhaps this WAS a meteor that had fallen from the sky, long before the land was farmed or developed, and that the force of the fall to Earth would have driven it down into the ground, where it lay buried until the excavator came along to dig my crawl space.

We talked about the neighbor also having some large boulders in their yard, and they were, of course, already aware of those, and that was to be their next stop. They felt like those boulders and mine might have come from the same meteor, that it would have more or less shattered on impact, sending pieces in all directions.

I also asked if I could take some pictures of them, and they said no, that there mission was still secret, and my posting pictures might compromise their investigation. That’s why I posted a picture of the boulder from last summer.

They said they think these boulders are from a meteoroid stream known as .... shoot I forget the name. I should have written it down. Anyway, I should hear the results of all of these tests around today, April 1st, also known as April Fooooools Day. If this turns out to be from a meteor, then it will be more exciting than the new plant I found in the garden last spring... I posted last year on April 1st about it.