GARDEN
JOURNAL
Spring 2014

 

April

This was the winter that never wanted to end. We got home from Mexico and an abortive bike tour in Virginia (SNOW!) on Wally's birthday, March 29th. The snow on the deck was over the picnic table! Once we got here and shoveled out all of the snow, it began to melt quickly.


"And all by the road-side the wild birds fly
up out of the thistle and into the sky. Red birds .. Black birds .. They sing as they fly.
Thank heaven for wild birds!
They're dressed up in feathers with colors outrageous!
They soar from this earthly bound kingdon of cages
on delicate wings. So small and courageous..." from "Wild Birds" by Jan Harmon
performed by Gordon Bok



I am showing Finnigan where he is not to go. Early signs of Spring: Daffodils are pushing through the leaf mulch. Lilac buds are starting to swell.
 
 
Spring is in the morning air.

 


By April 23rd spring flowers are showing their faces - brilliant daffodils, primroses, and pulmonaria. To the left, my new plant Goumi is the first to sprout green leaves. It is a nitrogen fixing shrub that produces edible fruit early in the season, not this year, but maybe next year.



Garlic is poking up through the hay mulch in the vegetable garden. On the right a very lovely diminutive primrose.
 

My pink pulmonaria, lungwort. These turn blue as they open. I also have coraly pink one that turns blue as it opens.

Our first Indigo Bunting and first Baltimore Orioles — ever!


May

In the fall I planted hundreds of spring bulbs, mostly daffodils, and different colors and sizes are starting to show themselves. Birds are flocking to the feeder, and this spring is the first time that we see both Baltimore Orioles and Indigo Buntings.


A King Alfred clone along with some other daffy Buds on the magnolia Jeremy gave me are swelling, and on is opening.


The beautiful magnolia flower, another bigger primula, and many lovely smelling, minature daffodils along the rock wall.



 

June


rhodedendron and creeping phlox
 


colombine, poppies and unknown blue bulb
Day Lillies and Lupines, Wood Anenomes, primrose and blue spring bulb

Fleabane and daisies on the lower, untamed part of the property
Primrose, rhodedendron, yellow baptesia, and foam flowers

A delicate gas plant that has survived transplanting and the Hooligan Brothers.


Dew on a delphinium, my favorite deep red Poppy, Spring Beauty from Carol Langstaff, lovely coral primrose from Christina Bartlett
 
Various ground covers in the walk way, creeping Phlox, Sweet Woodruff, flowering almond, white lilac, etc

There's more in the garden than flowers.

 

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