Springtime

Eastern redbud and carpenter bee

Temps have been consistently in the 80's in the last week. Everything is coming alive with amazing rapidity. The trees are leafing out all at once. All of the different shades of spring green are so fresh and beautiful, with the silvery green of the white oaks the loveliest of all.

The garden is outstripping my ability to clean up before the spring show. I decided to whack back the beautyberries next to the driveway this year, as they were really starting to lean out into the driveway.

The Red-Shouldered Hawks are feeding their babies in the same nest that they used last year, about a hundred yards west of the house near the top of a large Loblolly Pine. Some summer birds are back: Ovenbirds, Blue-Gray Gnatcatchers, White-eyed Vireos. Ruby-crowned Kinglets don't breed here -- they migrate up to the northern US and Canada to breed -- but they linger here until May and sing their gurgling stutter song for a month before they leave. A more adorable bird has never graced our woods.

The cool weather before this past week was perfect for the first serviceberry that bloomed. Days in the 50's and nights in the 30's are perfect for them. The ones that bloomed this week blew quickly.

I've never gotten a very good full scale picture of a serviceberry. It's
prettier than it looks in this picture. It has the look of white lace.

The daffs were reduced to limp ribbons by the warm winds, but more are on the
way. 'Thalia' doesn't love baking heat but they were lovely while they lasted.

The daff display in the big bed should be much more impressive next year; many of the bulbs that went in this year went in very late (just a month ago), and even the Campernelles from last year are taking a break after their first year of being in the ground here and blooming. I still have at least another third of the bed to plant, and I'd like to plant daffs of the jonquil class in the low part in front of it too. Scott Odgen writes in his book Garden Bulbs for the South "Narcissus jonquilla and its relations inherit tolerance to dampness, which suits them especially to the heavy cotton soils of the South... jonquils naturalize in bar ditches and other moist spots where their wild companions include true rushes."

The edges of the beds and the lawn looks like a fluffy crazy quilt of grass, clover, lamium, henbit, and speedwell. Although it looks crazy and yes, messy, the bees are just going crazy over it. First the honeybees came out, then the little native bees with faces full of red-orange Lamium pollen, then bees of every sort.

If you want to attract bees to your garden, plant one of these!

Bees love Eastern Redbuds. The picture below doesn't even begin to express the density of bees. At its peak it was actually necessary to walk slowly past the tree as not to bump into too many bees in their almost frantic comings and goings! The tree was an amazing sight, and standing next to it was like being in a giant bee hive.

For the first time in about 5 years I saw some pansies at Lowe's that I really liked. I didn't get them in the ground until late October so they didn't do anything all winter but they are taking off now. I think their soft butter yellow and violet blue shades are lovely.

The wild Crabapple tree is more than half opened up! I shall have to get some pictures of it tomorrow. When it blooms I think it's the most beautiful tree in all the world.

A bed in the front yard

Spring is emerging cautiously here. It's a relief to see spring being cautious for a change. Often it's as heedless as an irresponsible teenager and gets burned as a result.

I am still cleaning up, and while be for a couple more weeks, so here's one of three more archived posts.

From May, 2010. The bed at the corner of the yard started off with leftover compost. We're still working on improving the lawn. If you were grass growing on machinery-tamped dirt with a pH of 4 you wouldn't be happy either.

Like this spring the pace of progress in this front bed has been cautious and slow. The somewhat straggly rose bush to the right is 'Blush Noisette', recently moved from the east side of the house.

I've added a few things for spring interest, like Marsh phlox, spiderwort 'Zwanenburg Blue', rugosas, and foxglove.

April 2012

The bed has become a repository for daylilies that don't fit in east of the house, such as 'Red Volunteer'.

June 2012

I've always wanted a Vitex tree and thought its blue-violet flowers would look well against the house. There are also a lot of Bidens in this young bed because they are a great filler and have seeded themselves around. One day Bidens will be around my gardens, rather than in them, but for now I will take what I can get. Many birds love to forage in and around this bed and fly to it for cover: throngs of overwintering White-Throated and Song Sparrows, our resident Chipping and Field Sparrows, Cardinals, Goldfinches and Carolina Wrens.

Btw, the horse blanket is handing on the railing to dry after
I washed it, not because it had been on a horse's back recently.

Prince has progressed to walking and doing a little bit of trot work under saddle. What he'd really like to do is buck and run madly, but he's not ready for that yet.

By the front sidewalk

Many of the daffodils are blooming, but I haven't taken many pictures because I am
still in the process of cleaning up the garden. It'll be a miracle if I get the garden cleared
before the main spring show, but in the meantime, the birds still love the cover.

So, back to the archives (cue strumming harp) ...

Soon after the house was moved and DH put in a new sidewalk I put in bearded iris next
to it. At a beautiful old house in Carrboro that had been turned into doctors' offices I
saw a line of daylilies and then of iris next to the sidewalk and thought how elegant that
arrangement was in its simplicity.

The pictures of the iris below are from April and May 2008 and 2010.

April 2010

'Quaker Lady' 2008

Peach noid 2010

'Celebration Song', 2010

'Everything Plus', 2010

The iris were very successful the first year, and then they started quickly melting away over the next couple of winters. I believe a large part of the problem were voles laughing as they tunneled through the loose sandy soil and munched on the iris rhizomes. (Prissy was snug in her heated bed at the time; her resume would read "Excellent huntress. Hunts only under ideal conditions.")

I started adding spiderwort and foxglove to fill in the
gaps, but conditions were too hot and dry for the spiderwort.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. So I called upon -- Pink Showy Primrose.
Yes, the plant many know as a thug disguised as a princess in a lovely pink frock.

I'd actually managed to kill pink primrose a couple of times and it languished by the vegetable garden for a few years before seeing an opening and taking off. What did I have to lose? After all, nothing else was doing all that well there, and I wanted something low-growing and spring blooming. So, in the primrose went, and it loved the sandy soil and spread everywhere.

Primrose beside sidewalk and vegetable garden in the background.

Happily, other things have managed to co-exist with it, like Pink Muhly and Swamp Sunflower and Summer Phlox (added at the same time as the primrose ) and especially Bidens. Bidens didn't have any trouble coming up through it at all.

Besides the narcissus added for very early color, I also planted Allium sphaerocephalon after seeing it on some blogs. It has a rich black raspberry color and its effect lasts a long time, as it's beautiful both in bud and flower and opens over an extended period of time.

Some foxglove for height variation...

Four o' clocks, Mexican petunia, Bidens and Muhly provided color later in the season.

The final result in September and October was a bit tall and crowded. The sidewalk is narrow to start with, and with the hydrangeas on one side and Bidens on the other, it was difficult to get along the sidewalk when the plants were soaked with dew or rain without getting wet too. This, despite the fact that I cut back the plants several times. At least the overall effect was colorful. :)