The answer

The results of today's data gathering: Partial Shade.  

Brainstorm

I have had a brainstorm regarding the leaf-covered fingers coming out of the ground in the front yard.  It's a completely weird hypothesis, but I realised that I had seen something very like those before.  I knew I had seen them somewhere.  

I had seen them at our plot.  

The ones in front could be potatoes.  I did, a few years ago, plant potatoes in our house flower beds because they grow fast into beautiful huge bushes with lovely little purple flowers.  It's possible that I didn't notice them last year (or didn't accept them for what they were).  

It's also possible that it's a relative of the potato.  It's not a perfect match between the emergence at the plot of the known potato and the emergence in our garden of the unknown thing.  Interesting, though, isn't it?

Data-gathering

I'm making use of a data-gathering device today.  I think I'll try to keep it up as long as the sunny weather lasts, in different spots in the back.  

This is a suncalc; not exactly worth spending money on, unless you are trying to decide where to start a garden or something more fundamental than what I'm doing.  I should be able to figure out what the light levels are from my experience in the back of what's flourished and what's perished.  It's obviously not right for rhododendrons, for example.  

In my defense, I spent money on it early on, when I was still thinking that my missing years of experience could be replaced by gadgetry.  I am now trying very hard to recover from that belief and therefore not be sucked in by all of the wonderful things offered in the garden departments of certain stores.  

In the meantime, I will gather data while I can and put it into the file marked: interesting.  I will try not to be crushed when the "part sun" verdict from the suncalc and "part sun" plants I put in don't agree with each other.   I will try to apply my experimenting ways to the back yard and remember that most experiments don't work, but perseverance may eventually generate results.   I'll keep in mind that I want a nice garden, not just a nice garden this year.  

Lettuce reminder

We planted a bit of lettuce at the plot on Monday.  I keep forgetting to write it down.  It should come up within 7 days.  

Whoops!

I pulled up these guys, thinking that they were grass. 

Are they baby bulbs?  

Misplaced optimism, garlic

As I was doing a bit of cleaning around the chives yesterday, I pulled up something I thought was just lousy grass but turned out to be lousy garlic.  

I had planted some sprouting bulbs a little while ago, but they certainly haven't (yet) turned into anything viable.  I put one of them back into the dirt because I am a) an experimenter and b) an incurable optimist.

Morning rounds

No pictures at the moment; they all end up looking a bit similar after a while, anyway.  

The crocuses are quietly finishing in the front, as are the snowdrops, although there is still one at least in bud.  The front hyacinth is gradually emerging but not yet in bud.  The (presumed) lungwort is coming up all spotty and the mystery finger-leaf plant continues to flourish.  By the hostas there is something else I haven't yet identified.  The hostas, too, are coming up just fine.  No sign of the lily of the valley, yet.  The second of the white-edged leaf shrubs may well have bought the farm.  The allium is sending up shoots in slightly grass-like tufts.

On the side, the first of the fritillaries is really open (and lovely) and the hyacith keep going. The grape hyacinth are doing just fine but the main act at the moment is the daffs.  There are a few bunches open and a few more opening.  They're fantastic.  Soon to follow will be the tulips, which are now almost all showing buds.  The thing that might not be a delphinium next to the hyacinths has lost all of its leaves, so it might not be a plant much longer.   The bulb iris are growing leaves but not flower stalks yet.

Chive Alive

The chives are doing just fine after their winter in the cold.  These are the ones I transplanted and then thought died last year but were actually OK.  

Back again

It's possible that the big project for this year will be the back yard.  We have a little triangle of dirt in the back, accompanied by oodles of deck and a maple tree.  The back is enclosed by a tall fence.  

The light the little triangle of earth gets is not really enough to support flowerbed like the one on the side.  In the morning it is in the shade of a) the tree b) the fence and c) the tall building next door.  In the afternoon it is in the shade of a) our house and b) the house next door.  It gets a little bit of the hottest, harshest light of the day, though ... so it's not really a safe place to put shade-lovers, either.  

I can't decide what is to be done with this sad little plot.  Right now it has a couple of shrubs and some chives.  It used to have a couple of rhododendrons, but we dug those up and gave them to a friend who put them in a sunny patch and they've been growing happily for her ever since.  

The chives are easily moved (although I'm not sure where to, given that I'd like to be able to eat them and I'd hate to eat anything from the cigarette-butt, road-salt, dog-piss laden front and side yards.  The shrubs are less easily moved, but they were there when we got here, so it's not like I have an actual emotional attachment to them or anything .  Basically, I suspect the best thing to do would be to dig the whole sad lot up, turn over the patch completely and start afresh.  I doubt that is going to happen this summer.

Over the weekend we did a nice bit of cleaning up in the backyard.  The improvement is tremendous and instant.  I do want to do something nice back there.  I'd like to give the flowerboxes another go, for example.  Last time they basically flooded and that was a disaster, but I have learned a thing or two since then.  

For Mr. DeMille

For some reason, daffodils are personality-filled.  They have undeniable faces which they can turn demurely down, or toss back while laughing at the wind.  They face each other and sway like they're chattering and their bonnets and faces sometimes compliment, sometimes match.  This one was a bit of a nuisance to photograph and so I think she's ready for her close-up.  

Op Art

I am excited about the fritillaries.  I can already discern some of the lovely patterns on their petals.

The less-far-along flowers have a dark vein pattern which mimics the pattern the flowers will soon have.  

Blue forest

The grape hyacinths make a wonderful tiny blue forest, if looked at from the right angle.

Unfortunately, to look at them from the right angle, one must splay oneself on the sidewalk in a most undignified manner.  I am a bit self conscious about the picture-taking.  

I am self-conscious when strangers pass by and find me splayed across the sidewalk.

I am self-conscious when friends pass by and (maybe) discover just how many hours of the day I spend photographing my flowers.  I prefer to think of it as "documenting", but the fact remains that I have manymanymany gigs of pictures of flowers and dirt and things that will be flowers some day and things that were flowers recently and ....

I admit that I should be able to record this information somewhere and keep it in an easy-to-find way.  It's only a teeny-tiny garden, after all.  The best bit is only a foot wide, but so much can happen in that foot.

But it's worth it in the end to be know that it's normal for the hyacinth to be out before the grape hyacinth, and to know to look for crocuses in the first week of March.  

Art

No thoughts, no comment, just this morning's loveliness:

Dew drops on the daylily.

Crocus Clean-up

A chore for yesterday was to clean up the now done purple satin crocus.  Unfortunately, the flowers turn into a sort of slimy sludge.  I waited for a few days to give the flowers a chance to dry out, but it wasn't really long enough.  The remains are nasty.  

Even though they are decaying horrible gross-feeling things, once they've been bundled into a pile they revert to their earlier habit of pleasant beauty.  The little purple pile is both sad and lovely.  

The cleaned-up leaves are now interesting greenery getting lots of sunshine to serve the bulbs and make healthy flowers again next year.  

And I have purple-stained fingers and art in my garden.

Fits and starts (tulips)

Some of the tulips had flowers developing on Saturday.  The ones at the very bottom of the garden have quite a lovely iris-like development going on.

The ones between the grape hyacinths and the thyme are a little further along, I think.  It looks to me like it might come out yellow, but it's of course too early to do that kind of guessing.  

Pinching for profit

The last set of basil we had growing in the windowsill was tall and not a prolific leaf-producer.  I am not height-ist when it comes to the plants, but the whole point of their existence is to provide me with pungent leaves for tasty treats.  

To remedy the situation this time around, I am letting lots grow in a single pot (in the manner recommended by the now-defunct blog yarnstorm) and I've been experimenting with pinching them back (recommended by pretty much everyone who has a clue).  

The un-pinched plants grow up by putting out two leaves and a stem between them.  At the join of the most recent leaves are the next two in baby form.  There isn't any branching.

The pinched plants also put out two leaves and a stem between them, but where they've been pinched, a branch forms.  

The pinch-point is a mass of new-forming leaves.  

Yum.

Sunny Saturday Smiles

We have had a very pleasant sun-drenched Saturday, and so have the plants.I love the way the golden yellow crocuses look lit from within in the afternoon light.

Microclimates

I know that my garden has patches that are hotter or cooler than others.  I have been thinking of them as being "earlier" or "later" as I see the emergence of the spring bulbs.  Obviously, the patch with the Zwanenburg Bronze crocus is the warmest.  Very little is blooming at all in the city, let alone in my garden, at the time that those little lovelies come out.  

The next to spring forth are the pickwicks, in a bunch up the yard from the Zwanenburgs, but a rogue pickwick this year sprouted not far from the zwb's.  Interestingly, that particular flower came out with his compatriots up the yard.  However, even though I would say that the pickwicks are through now, I do have a couple just starting.  They're rogues who got dumped in the front.  I have to be honest and say that I can't be sure their lateness isn't due to the depth the bulbs got planted, but I suspect it has to do with how much longer winter lingers in the front than in the side.  They started on April 17, compared to the patch on the side, which started four weeks earlier on March 26.  

I have some confidence that it's not just a random effect of bulb depth because there is also a hyacinth in the front.   Even though the side yard hyacinths are in glorious full bloom right now, the one in front is just starting to muster up a flower spear.  Now, maybe it won't actually bloom this summer ... I shouldn't count my chickens.  Or, maybe the thing I think is a hyacinth will turn out to be something else that I've mis-identified at this early stage.  But I think it's because the climate in my tiny garden ranges quite a bit.  

That's useful information.  I need to mull it over, but I think I can squeeze even more wonderful flowering out of those few square feet.  Of course, the front, which gets spring later, will be shady for the summer, so I can't rely too much on the long spring.  Still, I think it's worth considering for next year.  Maybe I should put little patches of snowdrops (of exactly the same kind) in the various different places in the yard.  Then I might be able to get a purer sense of the timing of spring.  Plus, it's experimenting, and I like experimenting.  

Hosting hostas

I am not the greatest of hosta hosts, as one might guess from my inability to tell what it looks like before it looks deliberate.  But I did a modicum of searching on the web and found a picture of something that looked much more like these little guys than my previous best guess.

The baby hosta plants look like little horns coming up out of the ground.  Or so I've been given to believe.

Looking at that picture, I am amazed by how tiny the thing is.  When I noticed it, I thought it was absurdly obvious and I kicked myself for not seeing it earlier.  But the photographic evidence says that the little horns are just about the same size as a maple key, which is not very big at all, especially given that these are wayy back in the front yard right near the house.  

Say ahhhhhh

Is it my imagination, or are these Peter Pan crocuses sticking out their tongues at me?

Fits and starts (bulb iris)

The old bulb iris (not the Joyce, but the yellow one that gave confusion last year) grew quite a lot in the autumn.  It was one of the most serious "offenders" in the fall sprouting.  It sprouted so much and so aggressively that when spring came, it was crumpled and warped around the xmas tree boughs (and I thought it was a crocus).

Those bits are burnt and yellow and sad-looking.  I do hope that the plant itself is undamaged.  

After the deluge

We've been having heavy rain for the last couple of days.  The predictions are for summery and glorious weather over the weekend.  That will add up to a lot of change in the garden.  

The hard rain and hail (did I mention the hail?) was more than many of the crocuses could handle.  The front purple crocus are about half done in.

The front star-like crocus look like they might all be a-gonner.

The side satin purple crocus, which were already on the way out the door before the rain started, are truly done in.  

The Blue Pearls didn't do well, but the golden yellow held up a treat.  

The weather rang the death knell for the Joyce iris.

The sunny weekend should bring out the daffodils.  I am so excited, I can almost taste it.  Of course, I wouldn't because they're toxic, but I am VERY excited about the coming of the daffs.

Fits and starts (fritillaries)

Harkening back to the survey pictures I took on Tuesday, there are some newbies in the side yard that I'm watching with great interest.  There is a new plant coming in with odd characteristics.  It's not tall,  but it flops over willy-nilly.  It's got a flower developing, and I'm willing to bet it's a fritillary.  

Whatever it is, it's sort of close to the daylilies just to the north of the furnace flue.  I hope that they have different bloom times.  

Fits and starts (alliums)

While I was prepping for the mapping and before the skies opened yesterday, I took a few snaps of some of the plants that aren't blooming (yet).   I am interested in the starts.  Right now, there are so few weeds that I'm pretty confident that the things peeking out of the soil are mostly intentional.  I'd like to keep some kind of record of what the little things look like so I know next year.

There are chive-like blades which I assume belong to the alliums.  We have some in front between the newer snowdrops (and Peter Pans) and the older snowdrops (and star-like crocuses).  

There are a few more in the deep front behind the golden yellow crocuses.  They're not far from the mystery plant I mentioned a few posts ago.

There is even a single sprout just behind the purple crocuses.  I take it that these are all alliums of some sort or another.  I think there is one that pre-dates me and another that I speculatively  planted in an early year. 

Survey South Side II

Ok, really the last set of snaps for the mapping exercise.  I think I should take these pictures often, but not post them to the blog, eh?  That would a) be dull and b) use up all of my picture space in a very short time.  

There's the window and daffodils.

And more daffodils on the far side

Blank space with lone tulip. 

There's blank space where annuals were last year, followed by another tulip and some irises.

It ends with the delphinium, some tulips and the last of the irises.

(Phew!)

Survey South Side I

The last set of pictures to help me map covers the side yard south of the furnace flue.  It's a long strip, so I'm dividing it into north of the basement window and south of it.  Here are the images of the strip south of the flue and north of the window.  

There is a tulip and grape hyacinths.

There are hyacinths, grape and regular.

There are daylilies and more tulips.

There's the oregano, tulip, daffs and more tulips.  

There is lavender, grape hyacinths and tulips.

There are the walking thyme, grape hyacinths, zwanenburg bronze crocuses and daffodils.

Then there is the window.

Survey North Side

Here are the photos of the north side to help me map.

First up (farthest north) there are the satin-purple crocuses.  They're followed by a little bunch of tulips.

The tulips are basically crammed between the satin and the pickwicks.  In front of the pickwicks are my new favourite Joyce Iris.  

Beyond the Joyce Iris is another tulip ...

Followed by another tulip in the middle of the other bulb irises.

They're hemmed in by daffodils on the south side.

Finally, there are daylilies.  

Then there's the flue.