Garden in springtime
In a week, it's like the garden is simultaneously going gangbusters, and hardly changing at all... tulips are blooming in front (in fact a couple are past), and are starting to come out at the side (part-shade). The columbine and snapdragons are budding and barely stating to open; violets are blooming, and the lily of the valley are taking off, too. The things I was initially calling bluebells but which may in fact be hyacinths are not particularly happy with their transplant... I had two huge clumps of them, which I tore apart and separated into lots of individual bulbs, and replanted; the leaves never stood up and are now turning pale, and the flower buds which had come up are sluggishly blooming but not growing much taller. I'm going to assume they're upset but not terminally so.
All the new shrubs have leaves!! Well, okay, only one out of 4 of the raspberries does. And two of the gooseberries and both apples have buds but no fully unfolded leaves quite yet. But it's definitely going to happen!! (and they're definitely not flowers!) One of my neighbor guys is convinced that my apples are too close to the wall - aside from the fact that anything that narrow is weird, the reflected heat from the wall will surely be too much for it.
In other news, I used my neighbor's mattock to remove about a cubic foot of old punky roots from part of my vegetable bed (remnants from a neighboring maple stump). That was fun. I didn't chop my toes off, or anything. The spring mint is peeking up through the extra dirt I piled on top of last year's die-back, and the garlic is super-tall.
The tomatoes are super-tall, too, considering they're trying to live in about 3 cubic inches of seed medium... I keep meaning to fix that, but this past weekend was way too busy to get them outside. I think I can still postpone till next weekend on the theory that it's not quite time yet. Last frost is nominally early May around here, and the plant displays outside the grocery stores are still pansies, not tomato 6-packs. One could probably use the Stop&Shop parking lot as a reasonable farmer's almanac...
All the new shrubs have leaves!! Well, okay, only one out of 4 of the raspberries does. And two of the gooseberries and both apples have buds but no fully unfolded leaves quite yet. But it's definitely going to happen!! (and they're definitely not flowers!) One of my neighbor guys is convinced that my apples are too close to the wall - aside from the fact that anything that narrow is weird, the reflected heat from the wall will surely be too much for it.
In other news, I used my neighbor's mattock to remove about a cubic foot of old punky roots from part of my vegetable bed (remnants from a neighboring maple stump). That was fun. I didn't chop my toes off, or anything. The spring mint is peeking up through the extra dirt I piled on top of last year's die-back, and the garlic is super-tall.
The tomatoes are super-tall, too, considering they're trying to live in about 3 cubic inches of seed medium... I keep meaning to fix that, but this past weekend was way too busy to get them outside. I think I can still postpone till next weekend on the theory that it's not quite time yet. Last frost is nominally early May around here, and the plant displays outside the grocery stores are still pansies, not tomato 6-packs. One could probably use the Stop&Shop parking lot as a reasonable farmer's almanac...