bulbs emerging....

on a 70 degree March afternoon.


Spring may indeed be coming early this year. While the health bill may see some reconciliation this weekend, the smallest petals in my garden are welcoming the return of the honey bees. How busy it is underneath my feet this morning.

purple crocuses coming up.

daffodils out front seem to be starting slower than the tulips this year.

winter rye in a few of the vegetable beds ready to turn under.

 

more crocuses.

 

rear tulips coming up for the 3rd season.  I'm not sure if they'll bloom at all this year, even though they are supposed to be the 'perennial' type. Unless they are growing in the region that was once the Ottoman Empire, I don't think any tulip is truly perennial.

Amid all these signs of life, the wisteria doesn't seem to be catching on yet.

lettuce seedlings in

Yesterday I tucked a row of lettuce seedlings I'd started indoors into the spinach bed. They look a little droopy but I'm hoping they'll perk up in this cool weather. I edged the bed with marigolds that I also started from seed and sprinkled some sweet alyssum seeds around them. And I direct sewed a row of mixed greens around the pea trellis.
Also today, the wisteria blooms are continuing to unfurl.
And the peas are struggling to recover after the 90 degree stretch last week scorched many of their growing ends. A few seem to have begun to grow faster, but the rest are sort of lagging. I wonder if they don't get the right kind of sun in this spot, or if they are just slow growers.

While nearly all of the first tulips fell apart in the rainstorm last night, a few late bloomers keep a little color going amid the green.

wisteria flower buds

While the past few days have warmed to an unseasonable 90 degrees, the wisteria is beginning to leaf out as its flower buds are continuing to expand.Some other views of things surviving this late april heat wave...

history-April 2008

The yard began to wake up in April and the house got a fresh coat of Jamestown blue paint.

April 1














April 1-wistera still in hibernation


















April 10-Impression tulips and daylillies and irises are coming up














April 10-east rear bed with cement block garage














April 10-Daffodils starting to bloom in hydrangea bed














April 10-yellow crocus in front of barn


















April 10-first daffodils



















April 10-English bluebells emerging under white pine














April 17 first early tulips bloom


















April 17-When last week's grass seed doesn't germinate amid rocks and clay, I take more drastic measures and hand dig out the gravel and as many broad-leaf plantains as possible and replace with garden soil and more grass seed.


















April 17- close up of replacement




















April 23-Salmon and Pink Impression tulips in full bloom

history

With our first house, I inherited an overgrown swath of dirt from gardeners past. It was small, I guess--a little over 1/10 of an acre--but for someone coming to it from a 4th floor Brooklyn walk-up it was vast and full of promise. In back, among the towering sumac, bindweed and norway maple seedlings, old stands of knotty irises, spotty daylilies and rampant widow's tears were happily running wild. In the front, two beautiful azalea bushes suffered quietly from rust and crowding beneath a canopy of upstarts. And a pair of fuchsia climbing roses languished under a broken downspout, almost completely defoliated by blackspot. There were forsythia growing in locations I didn't understand, and tiny plastic toy soldiers abandoned in weedy patches waiting to be discovered. An ancient wisteria, romantic and stately and crammed into a corner behind the shed, served as a silent marker of this garden's untold history. (photos from house listing)