My fiddling in the flower beds is never done. These past two days, though, rain has forced me indoors to watch the garden instead of work in it. I went out today between showers to get some photos.
I spent last week’s daylight hours almost exclusively outside. I drank my morning coffee indoors, then put on my gardening gloves and hat and spent the days digging, carting, planting, and shoveling. I calculated on my gardening blog that I spread more than 2 tons of mulch in about 3 days. I was exhausted by the end of the week, but now everything is so pretty I can’t help but just stand at the windows (it’s raining) and admire all the plants that are about to burst into bloom. I ventured out into the drizzle today to capture these early buds and blossoms.
These photos aren’t great due to low light, but I want to preserve them here so I can see where everything was this time of year when I look back at my blog next year :-).
And just because I’m proud of the work I did last week, here are before and after photos for the mulching, from my April 10: Two tons of mulch spread. And I got a spicebush post on my gardening blog.
Each year since we moved into our house and I killed all the grass, I take a week off around the time of our kids’ spring break to fertilize, mulch, and dedicate myself 100% to getting the garden ready for warm weather and flowers. This year, that week starts today.
Originally I was going to take last week, but the timing was super awkward with my new job. I would have worked for one week at Support Driven, then taken a week off. Also, last week was very cold, and I would have had to dig the garden out from under snow. That is not how I want to spend my fun, spring-time gardening vacation.
By taking this week instead, I was able to get a solid two weeks of foundation in at SD. I had a productive two weeks of writing, wrangling, and strategizing before my giant piles of mulch were delivered on Thursday. Now, though I know there’s still a ton of work to be done to get ready for our Expo in June, I also know it’s in good hands with my coworkers and the amazing volunteers running things. I can hit the ground running again when I return.
Plus, I haven’t had time off since a quick four-day weekend on the Chesapeake in October. I’m desperate for a break. I’ve hardly taken any of the holidays off, except Christmas day and a couple of days at Thanksgiving, which we hosted, so it wasn’t truly a break. My brain is tired, and my body needs to be outside.
Right now there’s frost on the ground. The grass is a sparkling silver-green, and the mulch is like snow-dusted mountains. I’m drinking my coffee, listening to birds chirp. Robins hop around, looking for worms. They are going to be delighted today when I start digging up plants. They will feast on unearthed squirmy things.
A herd of ten deer is walking up the middle of our neighborhood lane as the sun rises. They live in the woods across the street. They’ve eaten all of my tulips.
I fear for my plants. The rabbits will chow down as well.
The weather is still not supposed to be as warm as I’d like it to be. It’s early yet in the year. But I don’t care anymore. I’ve got sweatshirts. For now, I’m just biding my time, waiting for the sun to get a little higher. For now, I’ll make lists of what I’m going to do first, what I’m going to move where, what I need to buy.
For now, I’ll sip my coffee in our silent house and watch the deer and the robins. I’m on vacation.
Our daughter and I went shopping on Sunday. She wanted decorations for her room. I wanted decorations for spring. The equinox is one week away. I feel like I’ve been waiting for it forever. I’ve got pages and pages in my garden journals, regular journals, and diaries dedicated to, “OMG will spring never come?”
For the mantel, my daughter and I found a nest with speckled eggs at Pier One. I saw it when we walked in, and I kept coming back to it over and over again as we browsed the store. I love it so much. I bought it. At Michaels we bought some silk cherry blossoms for the mantel vase. Two days later I went back out for pink candles and a silk chartreuse hydrangea puff. There wasn’t enough color on the spring shelf and I desperately need green in my life right now.
Our mantel looks fresh and springlike, and it makes me both giddy and restless. The same day we decorated, we awaited a snow storm. The kids wondered all day, “Will school be closed?” I wondered, “When will the weather break so I can be warm in my garden, move all my plants, and sow my seeds?”
The storm came in the night. About four inches of snow. Luckily none of the seeds I sowed early have sprouted or they’d likely have been killed. Everything is buried under white.
The kids played in the snow with friends all day (school was closed). The space heater in my office warmed my toes and my indoor seedlings. Last night we had a blazing fire underneath the hopeful mantel of spring. And here I am, writing again about how ready I am for it to be here, as more snowflakes drift down.
March is lioning. Wind howled through the night on March 1st. It shook the house, rattled the windows, scoured the lawn of leftover leaf detritus from winter.
Now, Saturday morning, with a cat on my writing arm, I look out the window and see a red cardinal and tiny house finches perched on the bare branches of the oak, in the slant of morning sun, looking for the feeder we took down so it wouldn’t become a missile in the 60 mph wind gusts. Soft grey doves bob their heads searching for seeds on the ground. The birds twitter and chirp, awaiting their breakfast. It looks warm out there, but it’s not.
A couple of weeks ago, spring teased. For more than a week in February, highs were in the 60s and 70s. I took advantage of the weather. On lunch breaks and between swim meet sessions, I put on my garden gloves and hat, dragged the hose from out front to out back, and grabbed a shovel to dig holes in the new beds I cleared at the top of the hill.
As hopeful as I was that winter was finished, I reluctantly allowed myself the possibility that it was not. I wanted to start transplanting everything I knew I wanted to move: bee balm, Shasta daisies, Rudbeckia; hydrangea, Echinacea, lilac. I really didn’t want any of those to die at my hands because I had moved them too early. So instead I moved a few testers — plants that might not survive anyway (rosemary), and a few that if they did survive, great!, but if not, that’s fine too (mums). I sowed some seeds as well — chamomile, feverfew, Texas bluebonnets I bought on my trip to Arizona with my girlfriends. The packets said to sow when the ground was workable (not frozen) in spring.
I hope the seeds didn’t blow away.
Even though I knew it could get cold again, and the work I did could be destroyed, I’m bummed by the setback. Highs are not in the 70s anymore, and more depressingly, lows are in the 20s for the next week. The wind still gusts as I write, and this is the first weekend in ages that I have free time and had hopes for finally getting into the garden. It’s March! The month I’ve been waiting for! Spring!
It’s supposed to get into the 40s today. I can at least walk the garden looking for frost damage on emerging leaves and flower buds. Tomorrow it will get into the 50s, then drop into the 20s at night. I’m tempted to move the blueberry bushes and maybe a couple other things I want to move around. I’m just not sure if it’s smart to do that when I know temperatures will drop at night (I’m guessing it’s not).
This feels like the longest winter. I have no idea how we survived Minnesota. I’m done with the lion. I’m ready for the lamb.
All day I’ve waited for a storm. The forecast showed thunder and lightning today. Our new meadow garden at the top of the long hill, where the hose doesn’t reach, could use some water.
In the cool of morning, I went out in the front garden, where the hose does reach, and drenched the new plantings: Bananarama Lantana, Becky Shasta daisies, zinnias from seed, butterfly white Pentas, orange firecracker Cuphea, scarlet sage, purple sizzle sage, Franz Schubert phlox, Pink Showers guara, blazing stars, violet-flowered catmint and Russian sage and Beardtongue, Genovese basil, Italian parsley.
Out back, though. Out back is a bother. I can move the front hose back there, but it’s a slithering behemoth and a heavy pain to move. I can use the short hose that lives out back, but that requires spraying over a long distance to get to the new plantings — cone flowers, bee balm, luscious berry Lantana, Joe Pye weed. Instead, I thought, The storm will quench their thirst.
In the hot sun I filled pots with soil, soaked them with fresh water, and snipped cuttings from rue and yarrow to try to root them. I cut fresh growth with sharp scissors just below a leaf node and dipped the wound in rooting hormone. With the point of a pencil, I poked holes in the wet potted soil. I stuck the powdered stems in the dirt and tamped the soil to close the pencil dab.
The sky blackened over the mountains. The storm will water out back.
I took a cool shower, pulled on a sleeveless summer dress, painted my fingernails and toenails a pale pink, and pulled the windows down in case the storm blew through while I was out. I had a lunch date with my husband — falafel wraps and curly fries with cherry Coke — in downtown Blacksburg. We sat outside at a mesh wrought iron table and the wind blew our napkins into the street. We commiserated about the cats waking us up in the middle of the night, like our children did when they were babies. The table’s umbrella kept the sun out of our eyes, and I watched couples lunch at other restaurant tables along the sidewalk. My fingers were sticky after the baklava. Still no storm.
On my way home, I watched thunderheads build over the green mountains. The cloud tops bloomed an ominous gray with brilliant white highlights against the leaden depths behind them. Wind buffeted grasses on the hillsides, pressing swathes of thigh-high blades almost to the ground before they climbed up and got knocked down again. The hills undulated in grassy waves. Dirt and pollen gusted across the road in large yellow eddies, and bursts of wind thumped the side of the car.
Here it comes, I thought. Tree tops whipped in the wild wind. I drove over to the nursery to see if there was anything else our garden couldn’t live without. When I stepped out of the car, the blast was fresh and cool, and an elderly pair sat on a bench outside the shop watching it blow. Potted shoots bent in the breeze, and planted pots toppled off the outdoor tables with each gust. The light was dim; there was no sun at this point. I got back in the car and drove home, hoping to beat the rain.
Inside, I opened the windows and let the wind blow through the house. I photographed the cats while my coffee steeped, and settled into the lounge chair by the window, listening to thunder while I read The Bell Jar. I found myself getting more and more horizontal, until finally I was lying next to the cats, book on the floor, glasses in the window sill, napping.
When I woke, the world outside was yellow and bright. The driveway was dry. The mulch was dry. The sun shone happily. I hear wind — I hear it rustling oak leaves out back — but the sky is blue with white wisps of clouds.
I guess I need to go on out back and water.
Butterfly Mind 