Tick tock, tick tock. Time is moving. Spring is advancing. Flowers are ready to bloom and I’m Not Ready!
Last fall I decided to leave the debris and summer stalks in situ and deal with them in the spring. Well…now it’s spring and I’ve got 3 garden beds full of stalks and leaves and spring weeds and mess to clean out. Spring is early this year and my flowers want out from under the leaves NOW.
Here’s one peony before clean up.
Peony Out Front After the Snow Melted
And here it is now, after raking the leaves and trimming dead stalks.
Peony Out Front After Clean Up April 2017
Daffodils and Peony Out Front April 2017
I feel like the spring flower planting blast is a train and I’m stuck on the tracks, gotta go, gotta move.
My new perennial grasses come the end of April, 2 1/2 weeks away, and their new home is still full of grass and weeds and gravel and mounded up dirt. I’ve sprayed weedkiller twice with so far no results – the grass is just barely poking above the matted down dead stuff now – and have moved out about a third of the gravel. The blue line shows where the new bed should be.
New Perennial Grass Bed To Be After Removing Some of the Gravel
Last summer a woodchuck took up residence in my flower bed, burying five peonies under a mound of dirt. Thankfully he’s not around this spring. I dug out the peonies, careful to shovel around the plants to not break the fragile shoots, then took out the dirt heaped in the middle of the plant by hand. I finger combed the last of the dirt out, then smoothed it (more or less). I’m happy to report that all the peonies survived and so did one mum and most of the iris.
Woodchuck Mess After Clean Up
The gopher hole had been where the white stake in front is. The critter basically dug up a couple mums and plopped himself down inside a big warren. Luckily the rain held off yesterday until I was mostly done.
Woodchuck Mess After Clean Up
This weekend I raked out the front section, then dug out the remaining cold, wet leaves from the holly bushes and peony by hand. Dave got me a few pansies and they are now happily growing in the same bed, just in front of the Ice Follies daffodils.
Pansies, Daffodils in Front April 2017
That leaves the rest of the garden to clean up:
3 big perennial sections in back
1 long perennial section that has grass poised to invade and conquer1 new perennial grass section to finish cleaning up somehow, then add plastic border barrier, plant and mulch
1 annual section
North Perennial Bed Before Clean Up April 2017
Plus:
2 Shrub borders with cotoneasters that greedily grab and hang onto leaves to rake
5 Shrub borders to prune (most need it desperately)
Plus:
Daylilies to move
New phlox, daylilies, gaillardia and achillea to plant
Annuals to sow direct
10 Containers to plant
Not to mention all the usual spring clean up/fix up chores!
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