Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

The willow is too close to the house.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Americans barely caring about Afghanistan is so last month.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

After roe, women are no longer free.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Consistently wrong since 2002

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Come on, man.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

A Senator Walker would be an insult to the state and the nation.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

You are here: Home / Garden Chats / Sunday Morning Garden Chat: Signs of Spring (Northwestern Edition)

Sunday Morning Garden Chat: Signs of Spring (Northwestern Edition)

by | 79 Comments

This post is in: 

From master gardener & commentor Opiejeanne:

[At top]: There will be apples.

Annie in the forget-me-nots (weeds here).

Comice pear seems happy.

Getting ready to put on a show – Shasta double-file viburnum.

Not the best photo. There are two cherry trees at right-center, the one with all of the flowers is a year old Montmorency sour cherry. The other one with only a few flowers open is Stella. She’s six years old and is a bit disappointing but her few branches were covered with blossoms two days later.
There is a plum variety named Stanley which we considered for a moment only because of Stella.

Rainier cherry. It’s been in the ground as long as Stella, the sticks in the other photo.

The neighbors’ alpacas have returned to their front yard.

***********

Sure sign of Spring, around here: Suddenly I’ve got two more sets of garden pics waiting to be posted!

What’s going on in your garden(s), this week?

Reader Interactions

79Comments

  2. 2.

    rikyrah

    The pictures are beautiful. It only became Spring this past week for us, so it’s gratifying seeing Spring beauty in full bloom.?

  4. 4.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    Sure sign of Spring, around here: Suddenly I’ve got two more sets of garden pics waiting to be posted!

    Yes, AL, I’m the moron who didn’t include his nym when I sent my pics.

    ETA: Maybe I’ll have time to get(or find) a pic of my roses blooming and maybe the CA poppies will bloom.

  6. 6.

    JPL

    Opiejeanne your pictures are beautiful, and enjoy the spring weather. I’ve spent the last few days weeding and the plan is to have the yard looking okay by Memorial Day.

  8. 8.

    WereBear

    Ah, pictures! I do love the first golden green buds on our leafless tress that creates a vista that is only spring… here in the ADK.

  13. 13.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    Apparently we don’t get an actual “spring” this year. Temps jumped from jacket weather to the 90s this past week.

    My one plant (my wife is the gardener) is a wisteria, and it’s looking glorious. Bloomed this crazy hot week. Still way overgrown, it completely ate the trellis I built for it and looks like it has designs on the house (keeps sending feelers that way). But sure looks great!

  18. 18.

    Waratah

    Lovely photos Opijeannie I can almost taste those cherries. We are still in a severe drought and have had night temperatures down to freezing some nights until this week.
    I finally had the urge to visit the nurseries yesterday along with everyone else. We have a two week trip planned the end of this month so did not plan a big garden this year and I knew I would not be able to stand not having tomatoes, peppers cilantro etc. I found some large pots to try tomatoes. Found a celebrity tomato I thought might do well and a chocolate sprinkles cherry tomato. Now if the young girl caring for our two cats can manage to give them some water while we are gone I will be happy.

  19. 19.

    satby

    I have to mow the grass again, the rain has made everything shoot up. And I have to weed and mulch every shrub and the raised beds.

    Got a couple of spears off the asparagus plants, one day not up at all, the next over a foot high. But, they’re in a bad spot and I have to move them, I thought I had cleared that bed but whatever was growing there came back strong and the asparagus is swamped by it.

    Even my 4 inch high azaleas are coming back after the long winter, so if I can coddle them through this summer and get them to grow more, next year the shady side of the house will have azaleas, astilbes, and a rhododendron blooming, I hope.

    The peonies are up, the oldest already has buds. And my daffodils are mostly over, the early and mid season ones have faded and the late ones are blooming now. I have to go behead all the faded ones too, before they make seed heads.

  24. 24.

    NotMax

    @satby

    I have to mow the grass again, the rain has made everything shoot up.

    Welcome to my world. And the ragga-fragga invasive cane grass is having a bumper year of infestation so far as well.

  25. 25.

    Betty Cracker

    @rikyrah: I like the last two lines:

    So no, they don’t really need to be understood.

    What they need to be, is defeated.

    Couldn’t agree more. We already understand them; now we have to beat them to save the country.

  27. 27.

    satby

    @NotMax: if I let my yard go, I would have a sugar maple forest, there’s almost more seedlings than grass in some spots. They did after a mow off though.

  28. 28.

    Planetpundit

    Great pix; flowering trees are the gift of Spring and the alpacas are too :)

  30. 30.

    PAM Dirac

    With a nice stretch of warm and sunny weather the grape vines are coming to life. Lots of bud breaking and little shoots growing out. Also lots of work making picking off the redundant shoots to make sure nothing is too crowded and everyone is going to get light an air when they get 4-5 feet long. The grass underneath the vines has woken up as well so I need to mow about every 3-4 days. I get more NY81.0315.17 delivered net week and those need to be planted. The NY81 wine from 2017 is in the bottle and is already drinking very well. I had pretty high hopes for this wine from harvest and so far it has exceeded those high expectations. Two other whites from 2017 are in the bottle and are better than I expected. Two reds are in the last stages of sitting in a carboy and will be bottled soon. The pyment (grapes and honey) was racked yesterday and is probably the best wine in the vintage. I learned from the 2015 pyment to not open a bottle til it is at least 2 years old. As good as it tastes now, I know it will only get better.

  31. 31.

    NotMax

    @satby

    Mowing is still doable. I swear the berm down by the street grows twice as fast as the rest of the property. At this point weeding, digging and the like is guaranteed to throw my back out.

  33. 33.

    Cermet

    Since this weekend was supposed to have a lot of rain, and since last weekend was so picture perfect, I had, of course, decided to wait to do all my outside chores for the following (this) weekend – Friday’s weather report was grim: rain all weekend. But Saturday morning, with what appeared as a small window (currently heavy clouds but but no rain), I change the car oil and topped the fluids. Then the clouds almost cleared away as the sun came out so I cleaned the yards of sticks and raked as needed. Still sunny, I decided to brush my Saint Bernard; as I did that, I noticed the condition of the front lawn and decided to transplanted some grass; with shovel in hand and the bare spots finished, I then figured I’d fixed some pot holes in my driveway hoping the rain on the radar nearby would reach me so I could quite. But the weather was still looking good so I gave in and finally mowed the front/back yards; still it refused to rain even through the radar seemed to show upper atmospheric rain over me – yet I had mostly clear sky’s and sun overhead!) so I mowed a good bit of my neighbor’s newly forming jungle (she is nearly eighty.) The bad weather still refused to arrive, I decided to bit the bullet and I got a ladder (I hate heights) and moved up to the roof to do what I knew to be gutters needing cleaning. Glad I did this because I discovered a tree limb had fallen and punched a small hole in the roof (that branch was huge and weighed in a good 40 lbs.) So I patched the hole, cleaned off other smaller limbs and cleaned the gutters and still, the sun was out. So I decided I did enough and set up a lawn chair and did some sun bathing – tens minutes, the clouds came in and had some drizzle – go, figure. At least this morning it looks like real rain will come, so I am reading the jackal page and relaxing after breakfast (I made pancakes for everyone – the Saint got some turkey bacon.)

  34. 34.

    satby

    @NotMax: I hate weeding! That’s why I’m buying mulch for the raised beds. Between mulch and Preen I’m hoping to get the need to hand weed the beds down to an occasional thing.

    I forgot to mention that I planted three of the ramp bulbs in a shady area behind my garage, hat tip to J R in WV for that idea. I may plant a couple more after I make pesto and breakfast today if I have any left. I hope they grow.

  35. 35.

    NotMax

    @satby

    Totally OT, came up with a killer mac ‘n’ cheese in the Instant Pot. Used 16 oz. box of cellantini, but any rugged pasta will do.

    After cooking the pasta in the Instant Pot (mixed in a spoonful or so of chicken bouillon with the cooking water before adding the pasta), threw in half a cylinder of garlic and herb Boursin (cut into chunks), a dollop of mustard and half a can of evaporated milk.

    Stir, stir stir. Stir some more.

    In batches, added 1/3 of a brick of cheddar cheese, shredded.

    Stir, stir, stir until it thickens.

  38. 38.

    OzarkHillbilly

    My tomato plants all weathered their first thunderstorm quite well. Barring a hail storm they should all reach maturity. I have finished planting the herb garden with all the usual suspects. Spent yesterday starting my potted plants and finishing up the pollinator gardens, also filling in some of the bare spots in my “lawn”.

    While I was watering it all to set the seeds, my wife was attempting suicide by diving into one of the hollers at 40 mph. Fortunately, a tree caught her at the 30′ mark, if she had missed it she might have gone all 100′ to the bottom. She is bruised and contused, but otherwise hopefully OK (her right shoulder is giving her fits). If only she’d had the freedom to drive a car without seat belts and air bags, maybe she could have had a partially paid for stay at the Sullivan Missouri Baptist Spa and Resort. After she had extricated herself from the wreckage she had to hike the last 1/4 mile home because she couldn’t get a cell signal to call me. Not that I would have answered, I was outside.

    Oh, and her car is toast. She put brand new tires on it Friday.

  39. 39.

    satby

    @NotMax: sounds wonderful!

    The Grommet had cheesemaking kits on sale, and I think I will get the deluxe one so I can make all of them! I’ve been wanting to try to make my own feta cheese since I can get fresh goatmilk at the market.

  40. 40.

    Baud

    @satby:

    I hate weeding! That’s why I’m buying mulch for the raised beds. I learned to love the beauty of weeds. 

    Personalized.

  45. 45.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @satby: No, it was on a straight part climbing up out of the creek bottom. She has no recollection of what preceded going airborne. I suspect she got a little distracted by something, ran off to the right, and over corrected. She was very distraught when she got home. Took me a good 15-20 minutes just to find out where her car was. Actually finding it wasn’t any easier.

  46. 46.

    Elizabelle

    @OzarkHillbilly: Yikes. My best to Mrs. OH. Frightening.

    WRT the terrain: one wonders how many other cars might be down there. If the occupants can’t climb out and self-rescue, and the cars cannot be seen from the road, and cell service is spotty …

    Scary.

  49. 49.

    geg6

    Annie cat looks regal and lovely. Currently, we have a riot of tulips lining the front of our house. Tulips are my favorite and my John planted fifty bulbs last fall to make me happy this spring. It worked.

  50. 50.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Elizabelle: That’s life in the hills and hollers. It happens from time to time that an accident occurs and it is not found for days or even weeks. A guy I worked with went off Hwy 19 south of Cuba, got trapped in his rolled over Jeep and wasn’t found for 3 days. It was snowing when he went off the road and it quickly covered his tracks. Somehow he survived (broken back but not permanently paralyzed) the sub zero weather that followed the storm, but he was never the same.

  54. 54.

    debbie

    Spring is now speeding by too fast. Slow down! My neighborhood is awash with azaleas blooming; I was afraid the cold days and freezes would damage them like they did the magnolias and forsythia.

  57. 57.

    oldgold

    I mentioned several weeks ago the my suphurically scented neighbor, DeeDee Plorable, has taken up raising chickens in makeshift coop. The result being free ranging chickens marauding across our once peaceful neighborhood.

    Now, that was bad enough. So bad, that for the first time in decades of being my neighbors, the Tall brothers, Noah, Gerry and their unibrowed sister, Neandra, have taken my side in this developing cluster cluck. Worse, is Deedee’s recent introduction of a crowing corpulent randy rooster, I have named Phil Anders, to the mix.

    Developing…

  61. 61.

    O. Felix Culpa

    Beautiful pix!

    I have a question for the gardening hive mind. We put down native grass and wild flower seed on a bare slope for beautification and erosion control, laying a straw germination blanket on top to protect against wind. Yesterday we noticed a roiling of ant activity carrying away our seed, which might explain why we’re not seeing any sprouts. Any suggestions on how to save our seed and actually get some grass to grow?

  63. 63.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @OzarkHillbilly: Oh wow, I’m glad the tree stopped the car. Darn those federal bureaucrats and their meddling seatbelts! //

    Sending healing thoughts her (and your son’s) way.

  64. 64.

    satby

    @O. Felix Culpa: try sprinkling borax around over the spot, it’s supposed to repel ants and won’t hurt the ground or plants. Keeping the area moist so that the seeds sprout will probably help too, don’t know how hard that might be there.
    Edit: Diatomaceous earth would kill the ants too

  65. 65.

    cleek

    planted six chindo viburnum yesterday. in a few years we hopefully won’t be able to see the neighbors!

  66. 66.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @satby: Thanks! We’ll try the borax and DE solutions. I prefer to avoid poisons that are hazardous to the other wildlife in our area (making the occasional exception for cute but evil pocket gophers).

  67. 67.

    satby

    @satby: the diatomaceous earth works dry, the borax will work wet or dry. Given that you may want the seeds to sprout with just the natural rainwater available, I might just sprinkle both and let nature take it’s course. The d.e. will kill the ants that aren’t deterred by borax.

  69. 69.

    BruceFromOhio

    What’s going on in your garden(s), this week?

    Daffodils are about to be dead-headed, there is rumor of iris poking up, and the forsythia is exploding. The lilacs may actually have a chance if we can keep the deer off of them.
    Rediscovering the zen of weeding.
    And there are a ton of worms.

  70. 70.

    Shell

    Anne, do you have trouble with the birds and squirrels with your cherry trees? Squirrels always made a mess with my apple tree as well. They were infamous for taking one bite out of a fruit and leaving it hanging on the tree.

  72. 72.

    opiejeanne

    @satby: Stanley and Stella are varietal names for those fruit trees, just like Fuji apples, or Bartlett pears….

    Ah, you’re kidding me. Never mind. Way too serious this morning.

  73. 73.

    glaukopis

    @OzarkHillbilly: That’s terrible. I know someone to whom a similar accident happened. He wasn’t discovered until the next morning and ended up in rehab for quite a while afterwards, though he’s fine now. Your wife is very lucky.

    I am suffering from a weird sense of dislocation in time. On April 17th I went into the hospital with a bad case of cellulitis. When I got out 6 days later, the freezing night temps were gone, the lonely daffodils were joined by lots of flowering trees and everything was suddenly leafing out. This last week it seems to have turned to summer. I can’t keep up. We’re trying to start a garden for the first time here – moved here near Dayton a year and a half ago. We needed some land cleared and will have someone build the fence for us (lots of critters in the woods nearby), but we’re definitely behind. I try to think of it as a multi-year project, though, so whatever we can do this year is just part of the process.

  74. 74.

    opiejeanne

    @BruceFromOhio: I want to learn this zen of weeding you mention. I truly need it in fighting off the buttercup swamping one of my smaller flower beds. I may have to dig up everything it that bed and replant the things I want to keep. The rainy weather was very good to the buttercup but not so great for the Shasta daisies, rudbeckia, iris. and whatever else I planted there.

  75. 75.

    opiejeanne

    @Shell: We have that problem with our apple trees and squirrels even though we keep dishes of water for them. Most of the cherries go to the birds but we get enough to make us happy and to freeze a lot of sour cherries for pie later.

  76. 76.

    opiejeanne

    @glaukopis: 8 years ago when we bought this property there were no fruit trees, no rhododendrons, the tumble-down fence ran across the width of the property (a piece of it is visible behind Annie), no pergola (somewhat visible just past the Rainier cherry), no entrance between the front lawn and the vegetable garden except at the back of the property, and everything beyond the flimsy old fence was chest-high weeds. I look back on it in wonder that we did so much in such a short time; my husband did most of the work of moving heavy stuff around, like the broken concrete edging defining the edge of the cherry beds, and I do most of the weeding.
    We paid someone to build the pergola and someone else to lay the bricks and bring in the pea gravel around our raised vegetable beds but we built the beds and had a lot of fun doing it.
    Because I am 68 and he’s 71 I am starting to replace smaller flowering plants with things like hydrangeas and azaleas.

  78. 78.

    pinacacci

    Rainier cherries are the best cherries in the world, sugary little compacts of love

  79. 79.

    oatler.

    I’ve got two pomegranate trees about ten feet apart from each other; one is blossoming and one is stunted. Would pruning help, considering I’m an ignorant peasant?

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