Category: Spring in Minnesota

The good, the sad, and the work to do

The long wait is now over. Things are popping all over the gardens, and I am starting to see what made it, what didn’t, and what work there is to do.

At the townhome gardens, sadly, it looks like we lost two sedum. How that happened for one of them is a mystery to me. That one was our only variegated sedum, and I will miss it. It had been there for a long time, maybe over 10 years, so I am a bit surprised. I won’t replace it with another sedum, but I may put a daylily there this fall. Potentially a seedling. But first I want to refresh my memory on how strongly the sprinklers hit that area. I don’t think the variegated sedum died from sprinkler damage, but I want to make sure it is a safe place.
The other sedum that didn’t come back was under the linden. That one never did well. It just never took off. I won’t put anything in that spot to replace it because the daylilies are also starting to underperform there. There are a lot of linden roots. It is a spot I will leave as “rock only” as things fail.

On the flip side, we have a bumper crop of Bluebells clematis volunteers, and those are in the “work” category. I need to transplant them to another area. This area is not optimal 😂

The volunteers are from our large Bluebells clematis that always performs very well, and I suspect I will continue to have volunteers over the years now that it is well established. Last year I allowed one to grow around the red daylilies, and this past weekend I dug that out and transplanted it into the spot where another clematis volunteer (different type) was way underperforming. Hopefully this volunteer does well. So far so good.

And then there are the missing hostas. There are three in particular that have no sign of anything, and that is a bit concerning. Two I was going to give to my Dad, but the third was one of my long-time faves, and if it doesn’t come back, I will miss it. BUT I have made a decision. If it doesn’t come back, I will convert that real estate to daylily space. That hosta really always amazed me because it should never have done so well there for so many years. That spot really is more of a … daylily sunny spot. But I put it there in my early years of creating our gardens, and it went to town for well over a decade. Probably 15 years. So if that hosta is gone, I will greatly miss it, but it will be replaced by a purchased daylily this fall. (Yes, I have my sites on a few candidates.) Then that entire area will be daylilies, with a few remaining Asian lilies, a few remaining tulips, and a legacy Autumn Joy Sedum.
For the other two “missing” hostas, if they do not come back, I will not replace them. The area where they were was getting way overcrowded, hence why they were going to find a new home with my Dad. And, my Dad just had a bunch of trees removed so they may have not done well there anyway.

Which leads me to story time. When I started our gardens at the townhouse many many years ago, I was head over heels in love with hostas. I planted boatloads of different hostas. I visited hosta gardens. I bought “hosta of the year” varieties I liked. I was gifted hostas. My Dad even bought me hostas from a neighborhood gardener he called the “hosta masta” (master, that is 😊). I have grown and divided all kinds of hostas for over two decades. I even tried my hand at harvesting hosta seeds and seeing if I could grow hostas from seed. (Not for me.) I love hostas. And I will keep the hostas I have that are still doing well. But that era was that era, and the garden “container” is the garden “container” (not getting any larger), and I am not getting any younger. So … in a finite space garden … hosta attrition makes way for daylilies, if the space is sunny. (Amazingly, I did have some huge hostas that did very well in relatively sunny spots. Go figure).
In this new era, I have my daylily seedling beds, and they are doing well. Those were solidified as the plan last fall. I also have one 6th year non-blooming daylily seedling in a different area, and I just can’t seem to move that one out, but we shan’t dwell on that. I figure at some point when the garden “container” is full, I will know it is time to stop doing daylily crosses, and then I will sit in my patio rocker, with a beverage of choice, and just enjoy. Haha, I can hear family and friends alike laughing uproariously. But that will be a few years yet. Hopefully quite a few. Because goodness! I have 60 “same cross”seeds I still need to get into pots in the seedling planter, and if even half of those go to seedling, oof! Realistically, experience tells me “probably not” and I will most likely end up with optimistically, 10 seedlings from that 60, to be planted in the 2025 seedling bed this fall, and watched for bloom starting next year.

At the historic cemetery, I am gonzo in love with what I see so far – legacy plants are doing so much better in year 3 of the mulch bed. The iris bed is in year 3 now, year 2 for watch to bloom, and I already see multiplication. Daylily seedlings I planted last year from here look great. Daylily purchases I planted last fall are coming up. Even the Blue Mouse Ears hostas made it.

Overall, so far, so very good.

Weeding time at the historic cemetery is down to an hour per week – amazing what the mulch bed tamps down. The only thing I want to work on is the aging creeping thyme. It needs some cleanup, and I may grab some irises from the old garden bed and do some fill in there. Otherwise, one hour per week weeding, watch for the garden to do its thing, and maybe, optimistically, try a few crosses.

Waiting, waiting, anticipating

Is it my imagination, or have the bird picked the majority of the small twigs leaving only the larger pieces?

I have seen the cardinals carrying pieces up into the big pine, but the robins don’t seem to be interested in the twigs. They prefer the bird bath.

I should get the shamrocks out. The birds pluck the dead shamrock stems for their nest materials. But the temperatures still are a bit shy of the minimum temperatures. I could keep them up to the house, but I think I’ll wait just a tad more. They always go through a bit of shock, and they are still doing well inside. They can stay in for a bit longer.

Additionally, I am waiting on the new daylilies I planted last fall to show up. I found one has come up when I did my walk about today. It is right next to the parents of prospective “Mahala”. Coincidence?

While I wait, I am seeing daily progress. Not only are the Purple D’Oro transplants up, but so are the Purple D’Oro 3 year seedlings. They appear eager to get going. And fingers crossed, bloom this year.


Figuring Stuff Out


Any perennial gardener will tell you that we are an interesting bunch this time of year.  We are raring to go, but the weather teaches us patience.  I am soooo there these past few months.  And compounding that is a not so little journey I have been on to get ready to retire. 

So this story goes back a few years.  I have known I needed a plan to successfully retire for quite a few years.  I have watched various female family members “fail” at retirement, and return to work.  I didn’t want to have that scenario, so I started to consider options.  I started to look at my bucket list.  We had done the camper on land up north.  But to do a garden up north we needed a well. That was tbd.  Our getaway, but potentially a retirement location to build out.  If I could handle not being in a neighborhood. We had also renovated a little house in a mining town off Lake Superior.  I could have turned the whole back yard into a garden and spent winters on lots of seed projects. It also had a neighborhood. All of that would have been a success from my viewpoint but my husband was very unhappy.  Not with the location, but with the house.  After we sold that house, I needed to do more definition of the items on my bucket list.  I kind of stalled out there.  More like gave up for a while.  But eventually I got back into gear and came up with next steps.

I had started to volunteer garden for a local historic cemetery. I knew I could stay very content from the beginning of May to the end of October, gardening between the townhouse and the historic cemetery.  I had bumped up against my energy limit last fall while planting all those new daylilies and divisions, but I knew that was a big season finale.  With everything planted and the historic cemetery garden switched over from rock to mulch, I knew 2025 and forward were right-sized – enough challenge but not too much either.  Where the problem came in was November through April.  I simply didn’t have room for big seed projects, and I needed something to do in our long cold winters, preferably with a neighborhood or some type of consistent socialization.

Now admittedly, I am not a spring chicken with unlimited energy, and I also have some health stuff.  But our house is pretty clutter free, so it stays pretty easy to clean, and the garage only takes a day in spring and a day in fall to get into maintenance shape.  There is just not enough to keep me busy November – April in retirement.  But I came up with a plan for that too.  I would work toward going back to contracting, and look for 6 month contracts November through April, when I was ready, and see how that went.  

Simultaneously, as part of my volunteering, I had a plan to do posts for our local historical society to keep me busy this past winter and to bring more proactive attention to the historic cemetery.  Between contracting and writing, I knew I could keep a good level of challenge.  And, of course, normal life has normal family and friend activities.  All was in hand.  

What I did not expect was the level of historical research I got interested in.  I wrote a few high level, season appropriate posts and then I started on a deep dive.  And that, my friends, was how the Mahala project was born.  That project has kept me very busy, through the deep of winter, past a layoff I suspected was coming but may have shortened my runway to retirement, and now almost a month into spring.  The research is now done, and I need to start writing. And I need to get what I hope are the “Mahala” seeds to go to seedling and, hopefully bloom.  But before I plant those 28 seeds there is a second baby shower to attend for our third grandson, and then Easter.  And it would help if I could get the shamrocks outside so I can have that indoor space for seed planting, but it needs to be consistently 40 degrees Fahrenheit at night before that can happen.  Oh, bother 😘

I am applying for jobs that really look super interesting, as they come up, but my guess is this is either retirement time, or a winter contract will pop up in due time.  We shall see.  There is a lot that is out of my hands.

Yesterday was cool. All that got done, garden-wise, was a walk over at the historic cemetery. My husband showed me some new things in the woods – a buck rub,

and I noticed a bird has a very nice nest in a tree along the edge of the adjacent corn field.

I also noticed the old garden has turned into a food plot for the deer lol


More to come. 

My trusty side kick is here to spur me on.  I guess when you are a centenarian in dog years you can nap on a pillow, on blankets, on a recliner 😂

The Sedum

Many years, probably decades ago, we received a few Autumn Joy sedum from my Dad. He overbought and we were the lucky recipients. Those Autumn Joy sedum far outperform all our other sedum, and for almost two decades I have rooted collateral damage, divided them, and used them to fill in for plants that died out. When our Irish Terrier used to attack the bees on them, in the potting soil the broken stems would go to be rooted. When bunnies and squirrels get a little crazy, in the potting soil the broken stems go to be rooted. When I make a weeding or trimming error, in the potting soil the affected stems go to be rooted.

However, when I cut the sedum back in the fall, as much as I try to keep the stems close to the rootball, in the spring it always looks like the picture below. And I, in cleanup mode in the spring, have learned to leave those alone. Because if I don’t, I will have an early spring need to reroot stems, usually when all my dirt is still neatly in bags in the garage.

Not to worry. Soon the new growth will cover them. And in the fall the old stems will be easily removed, when I cut the sedum back again, and create next spring’s cut stems … that I will leave alone 😊

Slight pause

First I paused garden work to have a weekend with our oldest grandson. And then this happened.

It built up from there, but thankfully the heavy rains from the day before were not snow. It all melted the next day.

Yesterday we got another snow storm, but today that too has pretty much melted, at least on the street, driveways, and sidewalks. Such is early spring. Go, stop, go, stop. Soon snow will disappear from the forecast, and it will be consistently warm enough to not question if garden season really is here. The tulip bulbs that are popping up greens are sending a hopeful message.

A good week

Spring garden cleanup is done.
At the historic cemetery, everything that needed cutting back and cleaning up is done. There were a lot of oak leaves on the ground cover, and it needed serious trimming, but it is looking very healthy with all of that done.

Instead of bringing the forced daffodils up north, I planted them at the cemetery where it looks like moles are trying to make inroads.


At the townhouse, the linden had shed a lot over the winter. The sticks from the linden that were in the grass are now either to compost or in the rock for the birds to find for nesting.

The rocks that moved out of the trim are back in, the winter lanterns are back in storage, the spring and summer garden decorations are back out,

the bird bath has been filled for the first time,

the forget-me-not foliage has been pulled (and trashed, not composted, so any leftover seeds can’t germinate in unwanted areas),

and I have started to put coffee grounds on the perimeter of the plants (in the rock, to slowly settle in).

This is always such a fun time of year – getting back in the gardens, cleaning them up, getting ready for the season ahead.

Next up is mulch at the cemetery garden. Just a topper.

Happy Spring 2024!

Happy Spring 2024! Gardening season has begun in earnest here. A few weeks ago my forced daffodils started blooming. They are now wrapping up, and tonight will be their first night outdoors. Their greens need to fade back before I can cut them back and plant them in the ground. Location TBD.
Here are the last of the blooms.

The sedum I left out for the birds and bunnies are all cut back, the daylilies, sedum, tulip, and crocus are all coming up, and the Bluebells clematis has buds. Coffee grounds (to prevent slugs) are already on half of the garden areas. It might not be official spring, but spring has sprung in Minnesota. No question about it. And the mosquitoes got the memo too. 10 minutes of sitting out by the little gas fire pit, and the first one made an appearance. Where is that bin of repellents? Better take stock now.

Early morning

May is here, and with it, hopefully, more patio time at the townhouse, and camping time up north.

The snow up north has returned to it’s liquid form, allowing tulips to start showing up.

Now, admittedly, those, like the tulips I recently planted at the historic cemetery, were forced bulbs from years past, and have never bloomed up north, that I know of. But just having the greens is an improvement from waist-high snow. It was a very long winter.

The past couple mornings, at the townhouse, I had an “opportunity” to go outside at 4am, courtesy of one terhuahua named Sandy. The moon was full and … the birds were singing. At 4:09 am.