Hello, yellow!

There have been hints of things growing once again in the side and front yards. Little tiny bud-noses poke out of the ground here and there.

Some are silly optimists who spring out of the earth in the fall and then spend the winter getting abused.

Some are just starting, like the not-bent-over stalks in the photo above.

Since today is the compost collection day around here and I had seen snowdrop buds elsewhere in town yesterday, I thought I might lift a few of the xmas tree boughs and see if anyone was, y'know, maybe about to flower.

I found a lovely pale green hyacinth starting beneath the piles.

The sweary one and I have been discussing what my requirements are for the garden starting on March 4. I say: yellow showing by that day and I'm a happy lady. The wonderful early Zwanenburg Bronze don't have to be open by then but showing yellow and I'm a happy lady.

Well, I am a happy lady. It's only March 2! They've got 2 free days to frolic in what hopefully will be sunshine. It was snowing ever so lightly as I took these photos, but it's supposed to improve as the week wears on.

Welcome back, garden! I'm looking forward to a good season with you this time around.

Pink

Just a quick one to mention that the hyacinth in the front yard has flowered.  It is pink.  The day after it first came out, I found it plopped face down in the dirt.  Maybe it's something about the temperature?  It has since righted itself, but it is generally downward-looking.  Its blue buddies are fallen on the pavement.

Bye-ya!

The hyacinths in the side are starting their decline.  Yesterday, they were leaning into the sidewalk and house like insouciant youth.  Today (which is much colder) they are a little bit more upright, like their grape hyacinth friends.  I love the way the grape hyacinths look like 18th-century wigs.  Sadly, not even the grape hyacinths looking so good can stop the inevitable decline of the hyacinths.

In stark contrast, the hyacinth in the front yard is still barely out of the ground, let alone in bloom or declining.

Maybe I should get more hyacinths for next year, too.  

Hiya!

I am well pleased with the hyacinths in our garden.  They aren't given to hideously flower-heavy heads (at first, at least).  They put up this sensible flowerhead, and it blooms and makes me happy.  

They come up before the grape hyacinths, but there is a time when they're both present.  The grapes are soon to be flowering.  

Some sooner than others, I think.

The grape hyacinths are fantastic because they have this greenery most of the time to let you know where they're going to be and where they've been.  I would dig up many fewer crocuses if they followed the same regimen.  

Up-up-update

I started this post yesterday afternoon and then got distracted by cutting my finger badly while harvesting parsley.  Honestly, I am WELL past the age when people started trusting me with pointed-end scissors and I did think that I had a few years left before I got to the blunt-pointed ones.  Wrong again, I guess.  

This reminds me that I should document the indoor herbs, too.  

We went away for a quick break which is why I haven't been posting for a while.  This is opposed to the rest of the winter and spring when I just was being lazy.  Hard to believe that I really posted every day for weeks.  At any rate, the break was lovely and much-needed.

Well, we're back and the garden is looking pretty good.  Having spent the last few days being astounded by hillsides covered in daffodils, it's kind of nice to get home and find that ours haven't started yet.  Even though the daff-hillsides were amazing, it's nice to know that we haven't missed our own (albeit humble) display.

I took some photos this afternoon in the bright sunshine which has been punctuating the hailstorms.  Honestly, the weather this weekend has been weird.  And snowy.  And rainy.   

Anyway, there have been splatches of sunshine to encourage some growth.  And to give me the chance to document it.

In the front, there are our old friends the dirty snowdrops.

There is also a little patch of newer, more demure, cleaner snowdrops in the re-claimed bit.

There are pretty purply blue crocuses, thinking about opening, but maybe waiting until the weather warms up a bit.

There are pretty pale blue crocuses, following the mood of their darker compatriots.

And there is a veritable forest of things yet to come.  That's my favourite.  It's all in reclaimed ground.  There are alium, daffs, more crocus, and heaven knows what else.  I'm very pleased.

In the side, the Zwanenburgs are well and truly finished.  

The hycacinths are starting.

The daffs will be out soon.

The Pickwicks are in slightly rough shape, but still going.

The Pickwicks have been joined by the "Joyce" bulb iris.  I love these.  

There's a house on my usual lunchtime walk round which has these in its front yard and for years it was driving me nuts that there were these things that looked like irises, but grew like crocuses. I am very glad to have them in my garden now (and to know what the heck they are).

The lovely satin purple crocus are also going well.  They, too, cohabit with the Pickwicks, and I think the mating is absolutely wonderful.  I'm not responsible for it.  I wish I were capable of such planning.  

All in all, it was a welcome sight.  I love the bulbs.  I love the way that they come up in the spring without intervention on my part.  They come up before any weeds have a chance to ruin it.  They come up and shine when the sun doesn't.  What a happy thing a garden is!

Sunny Sunday

Still no actual gardening to report.  In fact, it dawned so grey, cold, and miserable that we didn't even make it down to the plot for the gardening meeting.  Oops.  

However, the sun has come out and it's lovely now.  The daffodils are starting to think that maybe it will be ok after all.

The hyacinths are doing what hyacinths do.  It's silly, really.  It must be a breeding thing.  There must somewhere be a natural hyacinth that isn't barbie-doll-ishly top-heavy.  It can't be a favoured trait to end up face-down in the dirt.  But not here in my little bit of earth.  Nope.  Gotta get so many flowers onto that sucker that it can't support its own weight.  

My favourite thing at the moment is the little star-like crocuses.  They must be part of the new collection I planted last fall.  They're not in the friendliest of spots, but they're doing an ace job being elegant. 

Breaking News

The first of the grape hyacinths is blooming

I don't know if it's significant that it's in the shadow of the regular hyacinth.  I am sure that they came at different times last year.

Hardening

The peas, beets and beans got another dose of it today.  The wind blew them all flat in the morning, but the afternoon was stunning, so they did alright.

So did I, for that matter.  It's not just the plants doing the hardening of today's title.  I am trying to get rid of my softie-ness.  The difficult truth is that yard work is hard work. 

The side yard is spring-ready.  I took out some stones, but mostly I tackled weeds and debris today.  I also dug up the spots that didn't have anything growing.  It looks better.  MUCH better. The front yard still looks derelict, but we'll deal with that in time.  

In the front, we still have snowdrops.  

We also have these delicate lovelies cheering up the entire place.

Even more delicate are these little star-like crocuses.  

The pickwicks in the front are just passing their peak.

The pickwicks in the side are pretty much finished.  I removed the rotting flowers from the main batch.  This is not a task I savour and I probably would have waited for the rotting to get a bit further along were it not for the fact that the pickwick patch was being eaten by clover (more on that to follow). 

The deep purple crocuses (with some pickwicks mixed in) are just finishing and they are going to get the chance to rot properly before I take away the flowers.

The zwanenburg bronzes are completely done.  I removed the mercifully dry remains of its flowers as I cleared out the last of the leaves and a few weeds from under their stalks.

The hyacinth is peaking.  Lovely.  

The grape hyacinths are coming up but they're a way from blooming yet.  

The daffodils are starting to look like they'll bloom soon.

Some of the tulips are looking promising.

Mostly, they're looking like tulip leaves, though.

I have no idea what's in the ground around the tulips there.  I hope that they flower soon to solve the mystery.  It's just possible that they're onions or garlic.  I remember thinking that any leftover sets we had should just be put into any convenient bit of ground for the sake of seeing what they did.  

I cut back the lavender.  

I cut it very far back. 

I cut back the marjoram (?).  It was attacking the zwanenburgs and neighbouring tulips.  I tore some of it out of the ground, too.

I went gonzos on the mint.  I am starting to think that maybe the mint was a mistake, after all.  I was happily cutting it back (it was choking some tulips) and thinking how well it was doing and then I found some roots.  HOLY COW!!  The mint is seriously sinister in the way it wanders around the garden.  I'm going to have to keep a close eye on that little bugger.  I suspect I could remove all the mint I know about and it would still be coming up in unexpected places.  I ended up digging out a large chunk of it, and also digging little trenches between it and the tulips and daffodils.  Any roots in the trench came out.  

I left this in the earth. I hope that it's something I want.

I also left this in.  They can't both be delphiniums, which is basically the only perennial that vanishes completely every year that I expect to come up.  The delphiniums actually look like this:

The tulips at the far end, next to the delphiniums, aren't yet out.  However, they are usually last.  And well worth the wait.  I think the picture shows how much worse the soil is at that side of things.  I believe that is part of the reason why the tulips are so late.

There are irises, which didn't flower last year but hopefully will recover from the transplanting and start blooming eventually.  I put them into the ground at the end of the season in 2006, so I think that they should be given a stern talking-to if they can't produce something nice this year.

The bits and pieces of daylily are not obviously dead.  Some bits have sprouted where the plant originally sat, and I think I didn't put any part of it back in the original hole.  I think they must be shoots from the bits of root (?) that were left in the ground in the chaos of trying to get that monster out of the earth.  We did get to the stage where we were hacking at it quite barbarously.  It wasn't an easy task.  I will have to remember that I split it in 2007 and remember to split all of those in 2011, and NO LATER.

There are these things which could be irises and could be daylilies.  Time will tell.

So, I did pull out a lot of that insidious creeping weed that at first I thought might be a herb.  I now am certain it wasn't.  I can tell the difference between the herbs and the weeds.  The herbs smell delicious when you hack at them and tear them out.  I don't fool myself that I got all of the insidious one, but I got lots and lots of it.  I think it's got such a stronghold because last year I managed to convince myself that it was alyssum coming back after self-sowing.  Oh, innocence; such a mistake.  

I don't know if I'll have any alyssum this year.  The marigolds could be a nice replacement.  The nasturtiums will fill in the ground where the runner beans grow up.  That's the plan, anyway.

I didn't take photos during the process, but in the front I still have some clover attacking the bulb plants.  What gives with that?  Why is the clover favouring the places where my dear old bulbs are coming out?  And why is clover so bloody impossible to get out?  I have been digging and digging and digging with my little claw, just to get to the point where the root is weak enough to break.  I know, you're supposed to get the whole thing out.   I can't follow the whole root when it's wrapped around the bulbs.  

The rhododendron is looking better this year than it usually does.  We had two in the back and they were so sad and hopeless that we gave them away.  They survived the transplant and are enjoying seeing the sun for more than 20 minutes every day.   The back yard has issues.

The biggest victory on the day is the "lawn".  That little strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street, which the sweary one spent a good half hour raking and clearing.  

This is the best it has looked since we moved in.  No, we're not golf-ready.  We're not about the lawn.  And if we were, we'd be very ... upset ... about that gash delivered by the sidewalk plough.  As it is, we can shrug it off and hope that the wound will heal. 

After several hours crouched over the beds this afternoon, I may be hoping for healing myself.