Re: Spring. Yuck!

Well, it got to F90+ today and the trees are starting to expand their buds, 
Some of the Dafs are blooming but most will wait another day or two, 
yesterday the crocus's started to bloom and will last another three or four 
days, it might be one of those years were they come out of the ground and 
bloom so quickly that the deer won't find them.

The first non bulb flower to bloom this year again is the Petastis japonicas 
gigantus with there clubs of pinkish flowers coming out of the bare ground.

Once the frantic pace of the first two weeks of the season are done and my 
eye recovers from the operation, it looks to be a great year for most of the 
plants. Winter did not get to warm, so every thing looks to have survived and 
the voles did not visit this year.  

Lots of nice large Peony shoots, those in the pots have some shoots 4 inches 
tall already, after taking the tarps off only three days ago and the pots 
frozen solid not more than a week ago.

The pesky birds are back with the cardinals harassing me again and the ducks 
engaging in their spring orgies.  At home It looks like every bird for two 
miles is coming to the yard to find nesting material and who knows maybe they 
will accomplish all the spring clean up this year, they have taken a lot of 
the old grass foliage.  Spring would just not be the same without all the 
birds.  Now if I can figure out how to keep the raccoons out of the bird 
house this year -- last year they destroyed 8 bird house and raided maybe 20 
nests. 

My two year experiment with fertilizing my small yellow lady slippers has 
been a great success, last year the three clumps had 2, 3, 6 stems 
respectively, this year it looks like 5, 6, 9 stems-not to bad since I 
started with plants that each had one or two stems three years ago.  Now I 
will have to move some of the large yellow lady slippers to were I can get 
them fertilized each week too and see if I can get the same results, some of 
those plants are 30 years old and they have suffered do to drought and less 
than ideal conditions for the last ten years.

I large pallet of bare root plants is coming this week and that will be the 
next project to get done -- then we can settle into enjoying spring/summer 
transplanting.   

Now were did I leave that rake?  Its such a nice warm night- I should be able 
get some more work done out side.

Paul

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