RE: Spring?
gardenchat@hort.net
  • Subject: RE: Spring?
  • From: &* C* D* C* U* A* 9* C* <c*@edwards.af.mil>
  • Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2011 08:03:08 -0700
We had the nicest day of spring so far yesterday - sure wish I had been
home to enjoy it instead of looking at it out the window. I sure hope no
one here is getting floods or tornados!
My roses are just starting, as are the bearded iris and the Dutch iris.
Lavender and erisymum are blooming nicely. California poppies are
blooming. My white lilac is blooming but the others finished weeks ago.
In the dry garden I have Shasta buckwheat, lavender, and a few
wildflowers - the salvias will be along shortly. I am late in moving my
plants out of the greenhouse, but I'm getting there. The tomatoes and
peppers are doing much better now, too bad I set them back so far when I
didn't have heat for them, but "it is what it is". 
I took my bay tree out of its pot and planted it near the greenhouse. I
think it might be marginally hardy in our winters but it surely isn't
doing well in the pot. Where I have automatic watering and would look at
it every day is in the shade; where it would be happy in the sun I
forget to keep it watered. Hopefully the gophers don't eat it. 
We are having such a problem with gophers! There must be hundreds of
them. Husband sets traps every night, but after 18 years of this I think
we have bred smarter gophers because he's not catching many. But nothing
to be done except keep after them. Baby rabbits got under my fence
around the lettuce bed and ruined two entire rows of lettuce. I blocked
the holes and spread some blood meal about, trying to discourage them.
Apparently they don't like spinach - next year I will put the spinach
and the cilantro on the outside rows, maybe that will discourage them
from trying to get under the barrier. 
I had a garage sale the Saturday before Easter. Whoo that is an
experience. Next time I will lock the gate before it's supposed to
start, they were ganging up on me at 6 a.m. The swarms diminished
drastically by noon so I started weeding out front and did quite a lot
in between the stragglers. 
It's windy again today but the forecast says it will die down this
weekend. Looking forward to quality time in the veggie garden and riding
my horse. 

Cyndi  


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-gardenchat@hort.net [o*@hort.net] On
Behalf Of Aplfgcnys@aol.com
Sent: Tuesday, April 26, 2011 2:26 PM
To: gardenchat@hort.net
Subject: Re: [CHAT] Spring?

Whatever happened to spring?  All last week was overcast, damp, chilly,
and definitely not pleasant.  Even had a light frost one night.  And now
today it's 85 degrees and very humid.  Again, not pleasant.  It's still
overcast and gloomy - just hot and sticky and the shad flies are out
in force.  New growth on my Hellebores has wilted badly.
 
At least everything is blooming.  Things weren't great for our little
Horticulture show last week, but we made a decent showing with
77 entries - about 2/3 of the 99 we had on the same date in a previous
year.  But now, a week later, there would be twice as much.  All four
different varieties of Epimedium have shown blooms - I could only find
one stem of the common yellow one a week ago.  
 
I was pleased to see that the dogwood was setting buds last fall.  Last
spring's showing was the poorest I can remember.  However, I am 
puzzled to see that now that they are opening, about a third of them
don't seem to be developing like the others.  I don't know what that
means.
 
One sure sign of spring has appeared in the past week - the goldfinches
have resumed their brilliant yellow plumage.  They are here all winter,
but
in drab winter coats.  It's always great to see them emerge in their
bright
yellow - they go right along with the Forsythia.  
 
Many things in the flower beds are looking better than I had feared.
Some
things like my Artemisia 'Powis Castle' and Rue (Ruta graveolens) are
not
reliably hardy here, but seem to have come through just fine.  I think
it 
was
that they had such a heavy and complete snow cover through the worst of
the winter that they were protected from all the extremes.
 
Here's hoping everyone had a blessed Easter season, or whatever.
 
APL

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