Thank you, commentor Jeffery:
The white lilac needs a major pruning this year. I cut these today and brought them in. See how long my sinuses will deal with the fragrance.
April 19, 2021
April 20, 2021 Violets in the lawn (they decided to grow here)
***********
Our white lilacs panicles are just beginning to open — they’re always the last of our ten or so syringas to bloom.
Jeffery also let me know that the first Saturday in May (so, yesterday) is World Naked Gardening Day. On the one hand, it was *almost* warm enough to do that here north of Boston yesterday; on the other hand, I don’t even like to expose my scalp to that much UV. Leaving aside the issue of potting mix sifting where potting mix was never meant to sift… not to mention that my garden fronts a busy street!
White Flower Farm sent my first live plants for this year (Ramapo, Madame Marmande, and Chocolate Sprinkles tomatoes, plus three of the six sweet-pea plants I ordered). I don’t expect the specialist tomato nursery to ship for another two weeks at least, but at least I’m growing all these plants in pots, so I don’t have to worry about the ground being too cold.
What’s going on in your garden(s), this week?
satby
Heck, your lilacs are blooming?!? My 5 year old bushes have just started leafing out. I was glad not to have flower buds nipped by frost, including the surprise one one night ago. But, in happier news, the Lily of the Valley roots I transplanted last year only to see them mowed and disappeared by my lawn service came back this year ?
They’re now under a vented dome for protection.
eclare
Sigh. Too hot and humid for lilacs in Memphis.
satby
It’s sunrise. Time to feed the ferals.
Lapassionara
I love lilacs! Those photos are beautiful. I too have violets in my lawn, but not so many as in your photo. But my neighbor’s yard is a carpet of violets.
VeniceRiley
My lady reports the hedgehog scarfed down the entire bowl of moistened mealworms she put out. I pointed out to her that HOG is right there in the name. And snooze you lose, choosy robins and tits!
Suburban Mom
Our lilacs are blooming in central Nj. I got carried away at an annual sale, and I’m about 2/3rds of the way done getting them in the ground. I am easily distracted by weeds that need removing and volunteers that require relocation. In other news, my son who decided at 25 that a college degree was a good idea after all graduated on Friday. He graciously wore the cap and gown through the ceremony. He’s planning to work for a bit before he decides about grad school.
Steeplejack
@Suburban Mom:
Congratulations to the wayward son! ???
OzarkHillbilly
Here at the Hillbilly Haven, everyday is naked gardening day.
mrmoshpotato
@satby:
Dystopian horror movie or experimental music album
Steeplejack
@OzarkHillbilly:
I laugh, because some years ago my brother was thinking of buying a little farmette in the country, and one of his criteria was “I want to be able to mow the lawn naked.” A place-holder for “no close neighbors.”
satby
@VeniceRiley: One morning in winter, I saw a local groundhog trundle his fat self up the stairs to the porch of the abandoned house where I leave the cats food. The birds waiting for leftovers that day were disappointed.
OzarkHillbilly
@Steeplejack: It is a nice side benefit.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone ???
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
NotMax
@satby
Get a lot of tourist groundhogs there? How can you tell? Do they wear white socks with sandals?
:)
Steeplejack
Test . . .
Hmm, it seems implausible that there suddenly would not be any comments in nearly half an hour (since satby at 7:25). I wonder if the buffer is messed up.
ETA: And now four comments suddenly appear. Yeah, the buffer is messed up.
NotMax
@Steeplejack
FYWP is as FYWP does, its ways surpassing mortal ken.
Steeplejack
@rikyrah, @Baud:
Good morning! ?
Steeplejack
@NotMax:
There appear to be some own goals, however. ?
raven
I see JefferyW is having a music fest in his area!
Dorothy A. Winsor
I just got asked to review an article for The Journal of Cultural Economy. That was nice. Apparently an author found an article I wrote years ago about how work orders function to establish authority in an engineering organization. But I’m totally unqualified to affect the career of someone in anthropology, so I had to say no.
File under weird but nice.
debbie
Lilacs kind of fizzled here this spring. I love walking through a cloud of lilac scent, which never seems to be alongside any actual lilacs. Maybe next year.
Steeplejack
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Weird but cool. Your work lives on.
satby
@Steeplejack It’s a day ending in y and it’s not showing up as a reply to you on my phone.
^comment about WP, as for “local” groundhog, I guess I was thinking that here hedgehogs are called groundhogs.
OzarkHillbilly
Not exactly garden related, but it could be: The artist who fills potholes with mosaics – in pictures
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Steeplejack: Yeah, I was flattered.
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I can do it if you want to pass along my nym.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Baud: Uh, sure thing.
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: that’s lovely.
MomSense
Christos anesti.
Geminid
Some previous tenants at my cottage planted some Spiderwort (Tradescantia Virginianis) that are now blooming. An interesting plant, shaped somewhat like an Iris, two feet tall with dark green blades and purple flowers. They are growing in poor soil with a lot of summer shade.
The scientific name recognizes John Tradescans the Younger, an Engish herbalist who gathered native plants on three trips to Virginia. He introduced Spiderwort to England in 1629. The Spanish call spiderwort “Flor de Santa Lucia,” or Saint Lucy’s Flower.
O. Felix Culpa
@MomSense: Alithos anesti.
O. Felix Culpa
@satby: What kind of vented dome do you use? I need to protect emerging snow peas from birds and other critters.
I hope OH is having/had a nice time with new grandbaby!
waratah
My daughter who cannot resist a sale anywhere was buying potting mix and found some herbs and vegetables for $1.99 . She was excited and bought plants she did not know anything about. She has had to protect them while we had late freezes. She informed me we are going to have salad today using sorrel. I have not eaten sorrel so I am looking forward to tasting.
MomSense
@O. Felix Culpa:
??
HeartlandLiberal
With help of middle age son who has stayed with us for past year and three months during pandemic, got the big rear tine tiller out, mounted the repaired pull cord unit, and it fired up on first pull. With him doing about 70% of tilling, we tilled the 2,000 sq ft garden, on which I had spread fertilizer and sulfur (to lower Ph) Saturday. Going to local greenhouse at 12 to get seedlings for tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, herbs. Already have seeds galore ready to plant. 2/3 of that 2000 sq ft has for past three years been dedicated to wildflowers, zinnias, and sunflowers. Got those seeds ready to plant. Hope to get planting done this afternoon, 90% chance of rain tonight, with more in next two days. I did this just 36 hours after getting two steroid injections in lower back for disks causing violent pain down nerve to hip joint. But it had to be done.
TaMara (HFG)
The veggie garden is all prepped and because friends of mine are moving this summer, it’s become a co-op garden, so I can grow some tomatoes for them. They’d do the same for me.
Interesting fact about lilacs – they need a hard freeze to thrive. Just not one after they’ve budded!
I love those wild violets, they’ve taken over my yard. I don’t mind. They play nice with the grass and everyone is happy.
satby
@O. Felix Culpa: my vented domes are giant dog cookie clear plastic buckets that I cut vents into the bottoms of when they’re empty ?. They generally last a couple of seasons. Then I rinse and recycle them since I have a repeatable supply. I put them over newly planted things over winter (covered with a white opaque grocery bag to prevent them acting like a mini greenhouse) but only use them when it’s warm to cover something I don’t want mowed. Fortunately, the lily of the vallies are planted in shade, so cooking them won’t be a problem.
O. Felix Culpa
@satby: Ah, my tooth-free puppers doesn’t do dog biscuits. Didn’t even like them when he had teeth. I’ve got some strawberries that need eating so I can use their plastic containers to protect my plant babies.
opiejeanne
@TaMara (HFG): Our lilacs did not appreciate the hard snap last year and we thought they were going to die, but they’ve mostly recovered andright now our garden smells glorious.
The new greenhouse* is sitting in the driveway, packed in 10 flat boxes, and today we thought we would have some help setting it up but now we’re not sure they’re coming. The younger daughter got her second vaccination on Friday and yesterday she was achy and running a fever. We had the same reaction and were useless for 24 hours. The older girl will be here, and maybe we can start getting it set up with her help.
*The old one burned down in a spectacular fire, 2 nights before Christmas. Just one more bit of (relative) nastiness from 2020.
opiejeanne
Jeffery, I can almost smell those lilacs from here. Beautiful. We had a white lilac in SoCal, a variety created to grow and bloom in our hotter climate. I think it was developed at UC Riverside, since they did that sort of thing, and I picked it up at their annual plant sale. We have several here, in shades of lavender and purple, and one lilac tree which is new, a replacement for one that was ripped out by a driver who came through our fence at the corner. it’s about to bloom now, so we’re curious about what it will be like.
When we visited London the first time and were using the Underground, I noticed a lady with a big bunch of lilacs sticking out of her purse. I asked her about them and she just gave them to me, with a laughing admonition not to put them in a vase in the house. Her mother had told her it was bad luck, and I figured that bit of information had come from several generations before. I finally dug around online last week and it’s a really old belief that cut lilacs in the house is bad luck, the fairies don’t like it, etc. and the direst version says that it will precede/cause a death in the household.
Jeffery
@HeartlandLiberal: Such an ambitious garden. Is this for the winter to eat from or sell off – give away to family, neighbors and friends?
Plus to do this when your back is saying don’t. Get the heating pad out. I do nothing without my back brace on now. Got this online:
https://www.muellersportsmed.com/b2c-us/en/Open-Catalog/By-Body-Part/Back-Support-Braces/Adjustable-Back-Brace-with-Lumbar-Pad/p/255X
Hope you get all the rain you want to water everything in.
oldgold
It would seem that an early spring bloomer like lilacs would stir hope and thoughts of the future. But, for me, lilacs, particularly their fragrance, casts my mind to things past. I am not alone in this.
“The smell of moist earth and lilacs hung in the air like wisps of the past and hints of the future.”
Margaret Millar
“When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d,
And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night.
I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.”
Walt Whitman
opiejeanne
@oldgold: Whitman’s poem was about Lincoln’s death and the aftermath, wasn’t it?
Kristine
@Geminid: Spiderwort (Tradescantia ohiensis) grow wild here in NE Illinois. I see them in the state park and along the trails, but a gardener friend wasn’t able to add them to a home garden.
My shady sideyard was filled with trout lilies. They’re fading now, replaced by blue violets and the first of the wood anemones. The stand of Starry False Solomon’s Seal has spread to the point that I need to cut it back. I know this will be a lifelong job but they’re pretty and they were free and they thrive in a difficult spot, so.
On the cultivated side, the creeping phlox is spreading nicely, the daffs are fading after yesterday’s 85F, and the first of the Carnaval de Nice tulips has opened. Two of three crabapples also blooming. The prairiefire is always the last to bloom.
Another warm day ahead–it’s already 73F here by the lake. Warm tomorrow, then rain (I hope), then 50s again. Spring in the Midwest.
oldgold
@opiejeanne:
Yes, it is an elegy to Lincoln.
tybee
one of the advantages of not using a lawn service or not using chemicals in the lawn is the odd things that show up here, there and yon.
in addition to the spiderworts and violets and other “invaders”, we have a front yard with a hundred or so native orchids that bloom this time of year: https://gobotany.nativeplanttrust.org/species/spiranthes/vernalis/ .
the orchids spread slowly but surely from just a few a decade or so ago to the horde we now have.
since the orchids are a foot or so tall, some of the neighbors down the street have mentioned that perhaps i need to borrow a mower to keep the weeds down but i just tell them that the wife won’t let me mow the orchids and that seems to alleviate the situation…
J R in WV
@Geminid:
Spiderwort is also interesting in that come late evening all the clusters of blooms fold up tight for the night. Don’t know why or how that works, but fascinating.
Jay
Got most of the “garden” planted. 18 sq feet of vertical garden, 22 floors up. Tomatoes, peas, beans, pak choy, lettuce, spinach, bunching onions, Nantes carrots.
plus, pots of herbs and the perennials from last year.
bit more to go, one re-pot of perennials and possibly, some more flowers.
funny thing, 22 floors up, and an early spring aphid crisis.
little buggers.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Your headline made me wonder, “What happened with the Flower Show this year?”
For those not in the Philly area, the Flower Show is this hugely popular convention every year that fills the big Philly Convention Center with literal tons of dirt and plants and huge mobs of fans. You see them crowding the train platforms at the end of the day with armloads of plants and cut flowers.
It’s traditionally held in Feb/early March.
We went once but aren’t fond of huge mobs and didn’t really see anything that justified the price for us.
Anyway the answer to my question is that the 2021 Flower Show has been pushed back to June this year and will be held outdoors.
I didn’t pay any attention last year, but googling I learn that last year’s show ended Mar 9, so it just squeaked by before lockdown.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Jay:
Still have a couple of trays of seedlings I’ve got to put in the ground. We started a few pots of herbs from seed this year (oregano and thyme) and now have these tiny little seedlings that I’m afraid to move but that don’t seem to be growing very quickly. I think I should just get my courage up and move them over the next day or two.
The new raised bed I built is full of… something. A bunch of plants of the same species sprung up in a lot of the empty spaces, and it doesn’t seem to be a weed. We’re guessing that it came from seeds in the compost, but there are a lot of candidates (tomato and melon being the top). So we’re going to leave most of them alone and see what pops out at the end.
One year it was decorative gourds from Halloween.
J R in WV
@tybee:
There are quite a few native orchids around here, and many of them do look like weeds in their spare time. I’m pretty sure I’ve sent pics of that spiral lady’s tress in the long ago.
Old friend spent a lot of time installing native plants in their front yard, only to have the neighbors attack them for not mowing the lawn. Some of their plants were really tall, ferns, all kinds of stuff all mixed together. “Orchids, you mean to tell me that you “think” those weeds are orchids?”
Stupidity knows no bounds. You can cure ignorance, but stupidity is pretty much incurable.
DocH
Not from the garden, rather, from the woods out back (seacoast NH):
Trout lily
Jack-in-the-pulpit
Trillium
Clementine (the bike I rode to get the shots above)
Full corbiculae!! (bee slo mo)
Happy Spring, all!
Jay
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
freebee’s!!!!!!!!
Jay
@J R in WV:
death cures stupidity.
Geminid
@J R in WV: I never noticed the spiderwort flowers closing in the evening, but I found this out by reading up on the plant. Now I want to plant some Four O’clocks in a sunnier bed opposite the spiderwort. They’d be kind of like a flower tag team.
opiejeanne
@J R in WV: A couple of the neighbors don’t like us because we don’t weed the ditch outside our front fence, but it’s full of buttercups and forget-me-nots and sweet William, and lunaria, and ox-eye daisies. This is a semi-rural area, people have alpacas and donkeys and sheep and goats and chickens and horses in their yards, in their front yards, and these other idiots are fussed because they want to live as if they’re in a gated community with an HMO.
Or maybe it’s because they’re Republicans and they figured out that we Are Not.
BruceFromOhio
5 yards of mulch dumped in the driveway, and the rehab needed to recover from distributing all but about 25% of it yesterday and today. Oy!
Gvg
Dry, almost drought here in north Florida. The rains will start soon I hope. One rose climber has died back dramatically after a spectacular spring show. Not sure why it was so bothered, but I watered carefully. Anyway, I ache all over but the garage painting is nearly done. Remarkable how much cleaner the walls look.
I harvested a handful of beans and a bag full of broccoli. Never had much luck with broccoli before but this year I am getting a lot, enough to give away, enough family are starting to turn it down.
HeartlandLiberal
@Jeffery:
Thanks for the brace tip. I made an error in post, 2/3 of the patch is vegetables, 1/3 flowers. We love that part of summer when the okra starts producing, we have LOTS of breaded (with cornmeal) fried okra. We eat it like candy. We eat most of what we produce, and freeze excess for use in winter. Bell peppers chopped freeze very well, as does raw okra. Cooked greens go in pouches suitable for a meal or soup.