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.
Today I went outside to put used coffee grounds on the next section of the gardens and I heard this crunching, rustling sound. Then I saw a pinecone fall to the ground. Turns it there are a variety of birds that eat pine seeds, and today must have been a banner day for that.
Can you spot them? It took me a bit to adjust my camera zoom, and even so, they are camouflaged pretty well. Little acrobats, too.
It is coffee time at the townhouse gardens. They don’t get mulch love, and I try not to use a lot of chemicals, so they get just a dash of used coffee grounds. I started this practice many years ago to fend off slugs on hostas and now I (sparingly) give each plant a sprinkling. There is the thing about acidic levels and certain plants, but so far this practice has been just fine. As for timing, I start when the plants are popping up, but about this time of year, when so much starts to come up each day, I move to just doing sections. This year I started in front, but other years I have started in back. At the historic cemetery I will only put used coffee grounds around the hostas, to ward off slugs. The rest of the plants don’t need any boost. They have that beautiful mulch 🥰
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 😂
Hello Yellow, our first seedling from harvested seed to bloom in our garden, is up for the third year. Year one she was a seedling, year two (last year) she bloomed – amazing for year two! And now she is up a third year.
My notes are she successfully crossed with Just Plum Happy to form a seed pod (so as a tetraploid) but then the pod started to fail and then a bunny got it.
Hello Yellow is of unknown parentage. Nevertheless, she has a special place in my heart, and will remain in our garden.
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 😊
It’s that time of year again – Butt (kinda) In The Air, looking really close at the ground – are we there, are we there? I am looking for daylilies.
So far, the Purple D’Oro were up first, then the Tender Love, then the red Daylilies in the sunniest area, and today … dadadadahhh … potential future “Mahala”s parents are now both popping up. So there is potential for more “Mahala” seeds to be made this year if the seeds from last year germinate. An encouraging development for this gardener on this cool and windy April day.
In addition, Pink Tirza, South Seas, Marque Moon, and unidentified Yellow Double freebie are all also popping up (I did look it up last year. I just don’t remember it. And I am too lazy to go back and look right now haha). Unidentified Yellow Freebie Double was, I am certain, an error in freebie-ness. I don’t buy doubles, or choose them as freebies, and it was not particularly encouraging for crosses, but it is yellow. It can stay.
So, so far, I know I will be crossing for “Mahala” seeds, and I will be crossing for “Red Tirza” seeds. They were both great seed makers last year. Unless I don’t get blooms from the parents (highly unlikely) I will do a repeat. Probably even if the seeds don’t germinate super well. But I know they will, I just know they will 😉
South Seas gets to rest this year. I crossed her hard last year and the bunnies got most of those results.
I am also looking for a cross for our oldest grandson. He already loves to garden, and if that continues I will be thrilled, and teaching him to do crosses. Hey, my favorites daylily source comes from three generations of guy daylily gardeners!
On April 1, 2023, we lost our Amur maple due to irreparable damage from a heavy snowstorm. I was sad. But there was no saving it. The tree was removed, and the stump was ground out. Later that season a small red maple was planted to replace it. I was, admittedly, astonished at how small it was. But it has survived two winters and this morning we realized the cardinals now approve. (The robins must have set the way 😉)
One of the things I am continually assessing for the gardens is what has worked and what I want to change.
A returning topic each spring is what to do with the tulip bulbs that produce greens every year, but by and large do not bloom. My husband has said dig them out and repurpose that space for daylilies I want to add. Very thoughtful. And I seriously considered it. I really wanted to add those daylilies. But the shrubs right there really expand just about the time the daylilies bud out. The daylilies would be hidden.
And I remember the year we put the tulip bulbs into the ground there. Our now DIL was newly dating our son. Within 15 min of meeting, we were garden talking. She is directly responsible for my daylily seed harvesting habit 🥰 I remember vividly when she said, “You know you can save those and grow new daylilies! Don’t let them go to waste!” I even have a daylily from seed that we rescued from being trampled on the ground in a seed pod at a local garden store. So many memories. And we planted so many tulips and daffodils and different hyacinth into the ground that fall. Admittedly most don’t bloom any more. That was years and years ago. They now have gardens of their own, and two very active little boys who love to help garden. Who love to play in the dirt like us haha!
So, what to do with those tulip bulbs. Ack! They can stay another year.
Susan's Daily Garden 