My first day out in the garden today to start the cleanup from this past Winter's mess. All the snow has melted in the garden with the exception of a huge pile where the plow pushed all the snow in front of my house. That pile is still 3' X 7' pile. It sits just above my garden at the top of my hill. On top of that pile of melting snow sits a huge beech branch (much too heavy for me to move myself) which broke off this winter, and landed inches from some of my lilies. This is a real problem. I will email my neighbor and ask him to bring his chain saw up. He can use the wood in his wood stove. But for now, I am stuck with looking at this nightmare branch about 8" in diameter resting on the snow pile at the top of my garden with smaller branches extruding from it blocking me from reaching at least 4 daylily plants. UGH.
So I worked on the other end of the garden closest to the entrance to my house. There is still a lot of ground frost melting so everything is very wet, especially all the leaf mulch I used to surround the plants. Nothing worse than wet leaves that have been sitting under pine bark for 6 months. But how rewarding to lift up all that mess, and see 3" green leaves growing under the mulch. As I discarded the wet leaves in a big pile, and moved down the row of lilies, uncovering each plant carefully, I kept seeing little green faces smiling up at me. I was delighted. After this Winter all my day-lilies are dormant. I am a little concerned about 'Dragonfly Dawn,' an evergreen, where I didn't see any green, but have learned from experience to give it as much time as it needs. I will check back in a few weeks when I start my alfalfa and fertilizing program. I have over 200 lilies and seedlings to uncover in different beds, so it will take me awhile to get thru this. But considering the extreme cold weather we had this Winter, I am ecstatic to see all those green faces. So far, so good. However, at the bottom of the garden, the very lower level, when I took off the daylly winter coats, I also saw a lot of weeds, happy as they could be. I conveniently forget how much I hate weeds. So, I have a lot of work ahead of me to catch up to you guys. And then there is the middle part of my garden which I can only do sitting on my deriere and sliding down, as it's just too steep to stand up and walk around. That will be the last section I tackle as its still to wet for me to get in there. Tomorrow's temps will be close to 56 degrees, sunny with a chance of rain. This weekend temps will be up into the mid 60's with tons of sunshine.
Rita, love your Crocus garden. Beautifully done. You will be happy to know my tomato seedlings have all popped up... little tiny 2 leafed-seedlings. They are under the dome in my dining-room with a few late blooming daylily seeds.
Hope everyone is enjoying there Spring….a busy time of year for all our gardeners.
