After a weekend of cold drizzly rain (which we desperately needed), it was a treat to be in the garden today in the warm sun. It got into the high 60's, and was the perfect day to do some "spring cleaning" in the vegetable garden and the big perennial beds. Can you believe we're only a month from planting summer annuals?
The blueberries are positively covered with blooms, which are pretty in the walled garden, since everything else there is either still dormant or just starting to grow for spring.
I managed to pull out some of the winter cabbages, which had started to bolt with this warm weather, and are developing that funky odor that occurs when they start their decline. Time to move the last of the "Antique Shades" pansies from the nursery area to the displays at the front of the house, since it still needs to look good for another month before the spring things arrive. They are the perfect color for the brick of the house, but a challenging cultivar that needs lots of babying.
Took the broom to the creeping fig that covers the wall in the garden; it starts to look pretty ratty at this time of year, so the broom makes quick work of brushing away the dead leaves, exposing the new growth; it was exciting to have to tiptoe through the spears of asparagus that have just started popping up in the past couple of days! One of the luxuries of being the gardener is standing in the garden, in the silence, in the sun, eating the first stalk of the season's asparagus......
I was raking away the last of the autumn leaves from the vegetable beds (we leave a light covering there for the winter), and discovered the tiny little shoots of sweetpeas around the base of the tuteurs....I can't wait to see them start racing up the slats in the next couple of weeks!
Across the gravel walkway, the peonies are showing their heads (one in a particularly hot spot is about six inches high already), so I got to put out their cages for another spring show. Peonies always make me smile, thinking of my grandmother calling them "Pee-OH-nies" with the New York accent that still came through, even 70 years after leaving her childhood home.
I finished my day giving a haircut to the "Sunny Yellow" Knockout Roses that arrived a few weeks ago, grooming them to go into containers at the pool in a few weeks. There is something magical about spring, when you can literally watch things grow right in front of your eyes!
Leave the dreaded leaf blowers and power mowers in the garage for just another week! Sit back and enjoy the simplicity of the spring garden.....and look for those first spears of asparagus!
PS....The sakurafubuki is getting closer!
