Getting Ready

Here is our greenhouse about a week ago. Cuttings taking root and seeds sprouting. We are past our frost date; I mean it was 80 here today. The trees seem to be going mad with blooms. Star and japanese magnolias are raining petals and all manner of shoots are arising. The dogwoods are beginning to bloom so the crappy are biting and more fiddleheads are unfurling. Tomorrow: seeds to sow and plants to move.

?

For some reason this always strikes me as funny and triumphant for the tree! I suppose I run across chains, cables, nails, horse shoes and rocks being consumed by trees because I garden in an old part of town. I once ran across the remnants of an old wire fence way up in a tree. There is an old bed springs being enveloped in the way back. Mother nature always wins in the end.

Dramatis Clematis

Rambling across the top of our courtyard wall ... spring is so nice.

Update

Spent Friday cutting in new flower beds and listening to Big Star... last frost date is March 28... incomplete totally unscientific bloom census: daphne, narcissus, hellebores, forsythia, weeping cherry, spirea, camelia, red bud, peach, star magnolia, japanese magnolia, snow drops, evergreen clematis, quince, mahonia, dandelions ... a few determined fiddleheads ... killed a copperhead ... a veritable songbird symphony

dente de lion

Fermentation under way. A pile of freshly picked dandelion flowers in the crock yesterday. A week or so of fermentation then into the bottles until March 2011.

A Few Patterns

a carpet of late winter weeds

cryptomeria bark

new cobbles

salvaged pine gate

old crape myrtle

A Little Spade Work

It is really remarkable what you can discover and reveal with a little exploratory spade work. In every case the primary culprit was liriope root masses.