Garden Journal

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.