April 26. Cool with a gentle rain. The dandelions and violets are blooming. The creeping jenny looks like a galaxy of tiny purple stars as it spreads through the garden. The bees love it. Every spring, I wait to rip it out because they’re all over it, but this spring, I’m feeling heartless. Time to plant the garden.
The red bud still hasn’t bloomed. Everyday I check it, thinking the buds must have opened, but they keep hanging on, growing bigger and still tightly closed.
The peas have not come up yet. Will they? Won’t they? Little heart breakers.
I’m afraid I pruned the roses back too late and too hard. The rhubarb’s giant leaves are spreading out to shade the Mr. Lincoln which is just beginning to bud out at ground level again, and my mother-in-law’s rose bush is also just leafing out again, after I pruned it down to about two feet tall. I wonder if I’ll see any roses in my garden this year.
Every where I go, there are trees in bloom. I want to visit an arboretum and forest bathe in flowers. Spring is so lovely, so poignant, but not at all the same poignancy as fall. So new and fragile, so clean and gentle, and so yellow! Dandelions and daffodils and forsythia shining everywhere. The sun feels bright through the bare trees. No wonder the spring ephemerals come up to greet it.
April 23. Warm, sunny, gorgeous day. Upper 60s.
So far this month, I’ve put up a squash trellis arch, and planted peas along it. They haven’t come up yet.
I planted hostas under the second story deck after reading a blog post in Practical Self Reliance about eating hosta shoots like asparagus. They’re native to Japan, so I’ve never thought about planting them in my yard, but I have a lot of shade in the back, so it made sense to plant them there. Next spring, maybe I’ll have hosta shoots wrapped in bacon….
I planted some purple pansies around the forget-me-nots next to the garage door, and some creeping phlox where it can cascade over a little cement wall.
I’m moving ahead with the milpa garden plan. In Roots, Boots, Buckets and Shoots, Sharon Lovejoy describes a Zuni Waffle garden. I’m going to follow her recommendations for the corn, squash and beans squares. I have room for ten squares, and prepared two of them today. I’m planting garlic and onions around the garden borders to hopefully repel the rabbits, and I planted some of those today.
I’m waiting until the new moon to start planting corn. My gardener friends swear by planting root vegetables like carrots, beets, onions, etc, during a waning moon, and above ground vegetables like corn, beans, tomatoes, squash, during a waxing moon. Whatever helps.
April 5: warm and sunny, a beautiful day. I raked more leaves up under the maple trees today and covered them with hay.
The red bud lives, hurray! There are little flower buds coming out on its branches. The miniature daffodils I planted under it are blooming, as are the blue Spilka I planted in the lawn. Tulips and daffodils and irises are poking up in the front near the mailbox, and the comfrey is poking it’s leaves up too. I read that hostas are edible, they can be harvested and cooked like asparagus. They’d be coming up now too if I had any in my garden. They’d probably be happy under the maple trees in back. Maybe this year
I’m thinking about planting a milpa, three sisters garden plan in the vegetable garden this year, but with sunflowers instead of corn.
March 31: A warm day after a frigid week! High of 64, low of 54. Dark and clouded over, very windy. The forecast says rain tonight.
The daffodils are coming up all over the yard. The chives are about two inches tall, and I’ve already used them in cream cheese. Yum. I see dandelion greens here and there, but I’ve yet to put them in a salad. Perhaps tonight. I’m worried about the pink bud I bought at Garden in the Woods last year. It looks dead. I hope it returns to me. It’s such a pretty tree.
The bees were buzzing around the neighbor’s bee hive, but I see nothing for them to eat. No blooming flowers yet. Rose at Whole Foods, who’s been tending bees for years, tells me that they can feed on tree flowers, like the maple’s red buds, and others trees too.
I pruned the rose bushes today and fertilized them. I trimmed back the lavender, to keep it bushy. When I leave it alone, it grows out leggy and straggly. I raked leaves up under the maple trees and covered them with hay so they wont blow away. This is the cheap and lazy gardener’s version of mulch. I’m sure the tree’s own leaves are the best fertilizer. Last year’s mulch layer is completely decomposed and the robins are always poking around in it, which makes me think there are bugs and worms aplenty. My hope is that I’m building top soil, or at least keeping my trees healthy and happy. I also hope I’ll rake leaves in the fall this year. My hope every spring when I finally rake up the leaves.
Better late than never is the lazy , messy gardener’s motto.
Jennifer Outside 