Winter Chores

One of the best things about winter in Atlanta is that it is generally mild, and the cold snaps tend to be short lived.  Earlier in the week we had overnight temperatures down into the twenties, and we didn't warm out of the thirties for a couple of days.  Now that the sun has returned, the plants (and our old gardener bones) were loving today's 60 degree temperatures!

"Mr and Mrs" were away last week with their children, so we had the perfect opportunity to disassemble lots of the holiday decorations in and around the main house, and it was also the perfect time to do a good cleaning of the glass house.   We started in the potting shed getting rid of things that had outlived their lives or simply hadn't been used in the past couple of years; in the glasshouse proper, it was time to do some hard pruning on some of the tropicals and start shaping them for their spring re-emergence at the pool and elsewhere in the garden.  (The red hibiscus doesn't seem to realize it's winter, though, and continues to bloom its little heart out!)

The glass house still looks somewhat empty, though this is the time of year when it's a favorite reading spot for "Mrs" when we leave at the end of the day.  (It is positively glorious in a snowstorm!)  The first of the seeds are starting to sprout;  this one I like mostly for the story it brings.  A parrot seems to have dropped it at a friend's garden in Coral Gables last year, and the seeds were collected and brought back when I was there in November.  I think it's an iris or something similar, but we'll see soon! 

Outside, we've been topdressing the vegetable beds, giving the earthworms a couple of months to work their magic before we start planting summer crops.  The winter brassicas and such are continuing to provide kale, chards, and other greens.  We pull the snapdragons from the patio containers for the coldest part of the winter when they aren't blooming.  After a brief respite here, they'll bud out again and go back to the area around the house. 

Carmen, the weeding machine, preps everything prior to the topdressing, and also takes great delight in clipping the Creeping Fig that grows on the garden wall.  She is also the one who does such perfect squirrel-proof packaging for the potted tulips that will go up nearer the house when they start to sprout. 

It Seems Winter is Here

It's 48 degrees at the moment, but the forecast is for another cold night. It was in the 30's this morning, but the weather did the classic Atlanta thing and warmed up quickly. My transplanted Bostonian attitude has kicked in as I hear shoppers talking about the "snow coming to Atlanta!" (Translated as perhaps a semi-frozen flake in the midst of the rain tomorrow morning.) Quick! Let's all run out and buy toilet paper and milk! (I've never understood why these are the two things that we MUST have in our homes during a blizzard.....I'd rather have brownies, ice cream and cognac if I'm being snowed in).

In the garden, it's amazing what difference comes in a week. Here are a few shots from this week.

From the top: This camellia was hidden for ten years behind one of the arborvitaes that was cut down a couple of weeks ago. It's amazing what a little sun will do for a flower!

The mustards and chards are taking on incredible color as the weather chills.

The creeping fig looks so beautiful at this time of year when the asparagus is down for the winter.

The fatsia japonica with its "Sputnik"-like blooms

It looks like snow, but it's just a view through the elderly Autumn Cherry.

Bake some brownies and light the fireplace!

Tomatoes and Marigolds

This is a photo of one of the vegetable beds at the big house. Nothing special, just a picture I thought was pretty.

I was flipping through Pamela Harper's book "Color Echoes" this afternoon, and this combination of multiple types of tomatoes, marigolds, and sunflowers seems a great play of oranges and yellows. I like the look of flowers and vegetables planted together, and the fact that they're all edibles makes it that much better.

Photos for Monica and "Missus"

These were on the morning of April 9, which was ridiculously cold, but really beautiful with the condensation still on all of the blossoms and leaves.

From top to bottom: The Vegetable Garden Ready for Planting (Blueberries, Asaragus and Some Lettuces Already Showing); An Azalea that's "way too bright" so early in the morning; Kwanzan Cherry blossoms up close; a Foxtail Lily that doesn't know how early it is; and the Bridal Wreath Spirea I can never get enough of.

A Bit of Spring Cleaning

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!