Spring really is here; suddenly there are tiny leaves showing right at soil level that weren't there just a couple of days ago. The daphne is blooming; the crocus seem to have suffered gopher depredation but are blooming. The new hyacinths have their noses poked up but for some reason the older ones are not. Every few days I plant some more sees; ( Read more... )

I have crocus blooming! And the deer came in last night and chewed down all the pulmonarias and lychnis.

Still sunny with no rain. The soil at my jobs has already turned into concrete, which makes it lovely to try and pry weeds out of it. But all the hummingbirds (we get three species of them here) seem to be back already, both males and females. Perhaps they got a discount for all traveling here at once ( Read more... )

I think I may actually be finally over the cold from hell. I’m still blowing my nose with annoying frequency, but that could easily be from allergies. I’ve finally got my energy and my voice back. Taught part of a class last Wednesday and gave a talk at the Home & Garden Show on Saturday and after them both I was hoarse, but I got over that quickly ( Read more... )

Autumn is closing in for real. Working outside is getting to be an exercise in perseverance; frozen feet and fingers and it’s still up in the 50s during the day. And wet. Thinned two big beds of strawberries for a client and we ended up with two full feed sacks of strawberry plants. I trimmed them all and planted them in the vegetable garden ( Read more... )

Got the sun loving plants in! Now everything is in except for things I cannot plant yet, like trees and shrubs. If I can get the garden weeded and cut back before snow flies and the ground freezes I’ll be in good shape for next spring. Weeding means it has to rain or I have to water, though; the ground was almost too dry and hard to dig in ( Read more... )

Actually got a lot of the plants I’ve accumulated over summer planted today! It was hard going- weeding areas that hadn’t been weeded even once this year- finding spots for them. The shade plants are all in; next is finding homes for a handful of sun lovers ( Read more... )

Since the rains stopped, I’ve been working outside every day, trying to catch up with the weeds on 3 different jobs- and sometimes in my own garden. I’ve got a lot of plants to put in the ground before it freezes hard, and it’s slow going because I have to weed a spot for each one. We’re also trying to paint the one rental mobile home and that’s a ( Read more... )

Finally we have (supposedly) about 4 or 5 days without rain, so I should have been at the painting job that the masking has, by now, turned into paper mache. But a migraine kept waking me up last night and I just felt too much like I was going to throw up, so I stayed home. Around the middle of the afternoon I felt good enough to go out and ( Read more... )

A day without rain or lightning- but it’s clouding up now so we might not be able to say that soon. Spent a lot of time outside and got a good bit done; weeding the biggest bed. Most of the ‘weeds’ are gigantic clover plants, although the sorrels, plantains, and grasses are all well represented. Accidentally dug up one of the pink delphiniums; it ( Read more... )