Today there seems a need for a dose of optimism. One snow after the other has left a deep snowy blanket covering the garden, and spring seems so far away. In fact, the gardener’s spring is less than three weeks ahead. Gardener’s spring, of course, refers not to the seasons as determined by the path…
That’s the breaks
My short driveway is an asphalt valley between two tall snowcapped peaks. Beneath the thick snowy blanket are roses, nandinas, liriope, hollies, camellias, a fernspray cypress that is growing too wide for its proximity to the drive, and an old weeping theadleaf Japanese maple that encroaches on the drive by several feet. No doubt there are problems under…
… and again
In the early hours of this February snow six deer passed single file through the forest edge behind our home while my wife and I lunched on chicken soup and sandwiches, gazing out the kitchen window at the rapidly accumulating snowflakes. The last in this leisurely procession walked with a prominent limp, a result, I…
Here we go again
The snow is piling up …. again! And so, what else to do but relax with a good book, perhaps even a gardening book, or work on the spring seed order, or compile the list of perennials that can’t possibly be lived without. Today I have completed reading The Explorer’s Garden: Shrubs and Vines from…
And the winner is …..
The Perennial Plant Association has selected False Indigo, Baptisia australis as Perennial of the Year for 2010. This not a hot, newest introduction, but an old time, sturdy native. In my garden baptisia was set up for failure. The subsoil excavated to build my large swimming pond was mounded on the lower side of the…
Wild flowers
Beginning in late February with helleborus and snowdrops, then crocus and daffodil, dogwoods, redbud, and magnolia, through December with late autumn blooming camellias and mahonias, there are more flowers in this garden than I could possibly count. There are single daisies and double peonies, dainty blooms and monstrous hydrangeas, and flowers with amazing coloration and configurations. Some flowers are…
Favored conifers
I thought there were more evergreens in the garden, but looking about on a cold winter afternoon I’m surprised by the openness, the lack of enclosure, even in a mature garden with dozens (perhaps too many dozens) of large trees and hundreds (yes hundreds!) of shrubs. This place is a jungle late April through early November. Then,…
After the blizzard
Most traces of almost two feet of snow three weeks back have disappeared from the neighborhood. Except in my garden! A stand of mature trees bordering the southwest shades the property so that snow and ice linger for weeks after the rest of the world has thawed. The roots nestled below this thick white blanket…
Reflecting on a winter’s eve
Winter is the season for pondering, what could be, what can be? What happened, and where did I go wrong? (It’s a long story) My one acre garden has been expanding for more than twenty years, and is overflowing with common dogwoods and viburnums, redbuds, nandinas and hollies, lots of this, a few of that, and a…
A very good year
I’m generally not one to reminisce about the goings-on of the year past. Gardeners are well served possessing a short memory, better to forget the minor disasters that occur with regularity, but we mustn’t forget the why’s and why-not’s, the how-to’s that prevent complete failure. My wife will confirm that my memory is selective, the unpleasant or…
Merry berries
The garden is covered by a blanket of snow, but today the sun is shining and birds are darting to and fro. Our bird feeder has long been abandoned, a victim of relentless tree rats. No doubt there are feeders resistant to tree rats (okay, squirrels), but I’ve become satisfied to provide natural feed and…
The year in bloom – early spring
The drive has been shoveled, several times. Nearly two feet of snow have fallen today, and spring seems far away. Days such as this bring back wonderful memories, of the storm of ’66 when as a kid I delivered the morning newspaper, wading through chest high drifts. Later in the day jumping from the second…
Ramblin' through Dave's Garden 