From intrepid garden correspondent Scout211:
It’s February, so the early signs of spring are popping up on our property here in NorCal and we are starting to see some nice blooms. These pics were all taken on February 19th.
Top pic: Daffodils from bulbs I planted 5 years ago and they continue to bloom every spring.
Early red blooms on our New Zealand Tea Tree bush.
Fiddlenecks, a common local wildflower that is plentiful in the spring. The flowers are curled, like the neck of a fiddle.
Pink Wild Rose, of unknown variety.
Wildlife! Pictured is one of the 20 or so hens that we have roaming around the property during the day. This beauty is a Wyandotte.
Take a long look at that green, green grass because this is the only time of the year that the grass is actually green. The rest of the year, the grasses dry up and turn brown or as some people around here like to say, golden.
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The earliest daffodil shoots here, against the south-facing basement window, were about 6″ tall on Thursday. So, on Friday — this is predictable — we got 8″ of snow.
(The daffs will almost certainly rebound, once the snow melts. Those clumps have been there since before we bought this place, 25+ years ago, and have even survived my brutal attempts to thin them out.)
What’s going on in your garden (starting / planning / remembering), this week?
Baud
I bought a chain saw!
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
… and then the massacres started.
Anne Laurie
@Baud: Don’t forget the heavy-duty gloves! And a face guard, too… probably ear protection, unless you sprang for one of the purportedly ‘noiseless’ electric variety?
satby
Very lovely, Scout211. I love daffodils and have about 8-10 varieties planted, though mine aren’t peeping out of the ground except on the south side of my house as well. Snow insulates them from the worst of the hard freezes we’ll continue to get overnight, but it melts fast in the sun too, so it’s less of a bother.
I skipped seed starting this year and ordered 5 tomato plants and one eggplant instead. thinking of doing an experimental straw bale garden in my soon to be completely cleared back bed, both to reclaim it and to smother the weed seeds from multiple years of overgrowth.
JPL
@Anne Laurie: Maybe some pants. He needs to get the full chain saw gear package.
btw thank you so much for keeping us informed.
Baud
@Anne Laurie:
I don’t need your advice on how to protect myself from harm. I did the research!
satby
@Baud: God luck with it! I bought a “safer” version years ago and haven’t ever even taken it out of the box, but this is the year. It’s only for clearing shrubs and small saplings too thick for loppers, anything bigger I would call a pro for anyway.
eclare
Very pretty flowers, and that hen is majestic!
Anne Laurie
*Sigh*. The Spousal Unit ‘helpfully’ cut back our favorite Zepherine Drouhin climbing rose last fall, because it looked ‘messy’. So I’ve been averting my eyes from three waist-high blunt, gradually blackening stubs all winter.
I’m hoping it will sprout back from the roots, eventually… but just in case, I ordered a replacement to be delivered in May. This bush & its twin have been sending up gloriously scented & thornless roses in spurts from April to October since I planted them many years ago. Roses don’t do well for me — our place doesn’t get enough sun, and I’m too lazy to pamper them — but those Zepherines are GORGEOUS.
Since I had the online cart open anyway, I also reserved a Don Juan (red) climber to replace one that’s never done well, in the same bed with the Zepherine, because unlike my roses hope springs eternal.
Also a new-to-me variety, Viking Queen. If nothing else, I’m hoping it will give me some extra incentive to dig up & refresh the front row at the edge of our yard, where the daylilies desperately need dividing…
debbie
If they haven’t already, the snowdrops should bloom very soon. The first sign of spring!
MomSense
Thank you for the beautiful blooms this morning!
About a foot of lovely, snow covers the garden thanks to Friday’s storm. I have been reorganizing my bedroom (had to move all the furniture) and when I moved the books and bookcase I had to pause awhile to look through my gardening books. I need to make some changes to some of the beds around the house.
satby
Oh, and daffodils should be thinned every 3-5 years or they’ll flower less and less. 35 years ago I learned this when we moved to the house in Chicago. The front had a flower bed with long neglected evergreens so straggly we just dug them out and planted annuals. A mystery clump of green we left in case it was something good turned out to be daffodils overgrown and starved of nutrition; we had fertilized the annuals the year before so the second year the clump put out flowers. I dug out the clump when the greenery faded that year and got at least 30 daughter bulbs, which I replanted and also gave to neighbors.
SiubhanDuinne
@Anne Laurie:
Those are ominous words.
Immanentize
Thank you Scout211. I’d love to hear more about the hens at your chicken ranch. That one is a beaut.
Meanwhile, here as AL mentioned, I got 10″ of heavy wet snow. I planted my first seeds inside yesterday to celebrate shovelling — Thai basil and epazote. I’m using the toilet paper and paper towel cardboard rolls, starter cups method again (cut to 2.25 inches each which is half a TP roll). Let the growing begin!
satby
@Anne Laurie: I don’t have much luck with roses either, but hope does spring eternal and this year I ordered two: another Joseph’s Coat and one disease resistant floribunda called Living Easy. Hope springs eternal. This will be the fourth and last time I try Joseph’s Coat, which I planted and did little else but enjoy at my old place in MI. But Michigan has dirt, not dirty sand, and now I know better. I think.
mrmoshpotato
@Baud:
But did you buy some pants?!
Mousebumples
@satby: we planted a rosebush for my daughter, after she was born, 2 ish years ago. It usually does pretty well, though I don’t have a green thumb by any means!
mrmoshpotato
@Immanentize:
Ummm….. hooray?
raven
Garden girl has been going at it like mad. The tulip magnolias are blooming for the second time this “winter” and the pollen is raging.
O. Felix Culpa
@raven:
Perhaps suggest an anger management program? /
Immanentize
@mrmoshpotato: Well, it was that or just collapse, so why not make myself a reward after shovelling? I also pressure cooked a frozen chicken. I love that one can do that.
Immanentize
@raven: have your new tenants arrived? It would be a good way to show off the house with the magnolias in bloom.
mrmoshpotato
@Immanentize: I personally would’ve celebrated with a nap – and seed planting – and a chicken.
Ken
That’s not always the best thing. Are your roses grafts?
raven
@Immanentize: They came a few weeks back and partially furnished and then went to see folks down on the coast. They said they’d be back “mid-march” so it’s consistent with “we want to be there 3-6 months a year”. It turns out that the father of the husband grew up here so everyone is familiar with the weather and bloom patterns!
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: You’ll be sorry…
satby
@Ken: that variety is an own root, not grafted normally.
Gvg
@Anne Laurie: Don Juan has thorns, a lot of big ones, unlike Zepharine so give it room. Something I have learned from years of rose growing, is that if you plant them well inside BIG beds where there branches don’t stick out and catch people every time they walk by, it is much easier to just enjoy them, and family and friends don’t complain and try to talk you into getting rid of them. Never plant them at the edge of a bed or next to something like a hose spigot or a gate. If you put them on a trellis, it needs to be something you make out of pt 2×4’s or bigger not delicate pretty store bought things. And arbor need to be at least 2 feet higher and wider on both sides, so that the canes can be kept away from people including scalps which have thin skin and bleed a lot.
My mother has been getting frailer for years and keeps planting roses right at the edge of beds, which immediately stick out and hurt people. Her Don Juan is huge and a problem. Dad and I will need to build something this year.
My loves are the old garden roses, especially teas and tea noisettes. I need to build some structures for them to grow on this year.
WaterGirl
Gorgeous flowers!
@Immanentize: You are back to feeling well enough to shovel???
That’s great news!
satby
@Mousebumples: ? Been looking at any for this year?
OzarkHillbilly
Thanx for the pics, Scout. A welcome reminder that spring is in fact coming, even if it doesn’t look like it right now.
That storm gave us 2″ of sleet with a dusting of snow over it. Doesn’t sound like much but sleet never melts all at once. Always just the top 1/8-1/4″ which then dribbles down and turns the rest of the sleet to solid ice when it refreezes that night. Which is what it did yesterday and last night. Supposed to hit 50 today, so I’m going to spread some ash and sand on the drive to enhance the power of the sun. Maybe my wife can drive herself to work tomorrow.
Supposed to get in the 60s on Tuesday and stay there for the rest of the week. Just long enough to whet my appetite before the last blast of winter comes to crush my spirits again.
oatler
@eclare:
Although your world wonders me
with your majestic superior cackling hen
Your people I do not understand
Immanentize
@WaterGirl: I shovel slowly, but yes I am back in the fray. But “minor?” surgery March 14 which will take my lifting powers from me for 4 wks or so.
Then, iron man competitions.
satby
Not really gardening, other than I was hoping for more time to do it in, I was this > < close to being almost fully retired from the doctor’s office, only to learn she’s likely to move her practice after almost 40 years association with (big glasses joint). Which means I’ll stay on to help until that’s accomplished, but it’s also a very graceful way ultimately for me to bow out, since she can’t take her full staff to the new location under consideration (joining a practice).
Now if I can just sell that farmers market booth!
satby
@Immanentize: Wishing a quick recovery for you.
Immanentize
@satby: Sometimes the timing works out.
And thanks for the good thoughts.
Anne Laurie
Crossing fingers (& not just for you) that we get another pandemic ‘reprieve’ this spring / summer — there are a lot of people who want to get out again, and I assume it’ll be easier for you to sell your space if the market traffic picks up!
Spartan green
@Anne Laurie: I had no luck with my roses last year. I battled rose slugs all season. The chihuly put out a few booms, but the bugs got them and they never opened. Even the zepherine never rebloomed. I’m considering moving them as they did much better the year before when they were in pots. Fingers crossed.
eclare
@oatler: Perfect Sunday morning tune!
debbie
@Immanentize:
I assume this relates to your back, and I’m hoping for a full and speedy recovery and a back that never bothers you again.
satby
@Spartan green: Some growers won’t send rose plants to Indiana (and other states, TN is one I think) because of a rose disease in this area, an untreatable virus spread by mites. So, this year all of my current and future rose shrubs are getting regular doses of a systemic pesticide. Because if they develop the disease they have to be completely dug up, roots and all, bagged, and disposed of, not composted.
Spartan green
@satby: Yikes. I don’t think that’s my problem. I was picking those green worms off them all season. And I started using that treatment you told me about around mid-season. (I’m in Oakland county MI)
oldgold
Normally I do no garden planning until the Summer Solstice has passed. In the last week of June, I visit Hope & Les’$ Garden Center and liberate a few plants from the hospice unit.
Yesterday I ambled into Hope & Les’$ and to the absolute amazement of everyone, in an action more astonishing than Hell going Baptist, I purchased 2 packs of sunflower seeds.
Why?
I want to show solidarity with Ukraine. The sunflower is Ukraine’s national flower. Like Ukraine, the sunflower is sturdy, beautiful and true to itself. Even on the darkest days it stands tall and finds the sunlight.
Miss Bianca
It finally got warm enough to plow the driveway yesterday, after a several-day snow dump and then frigid sub-zero temperatures kept us housebound at the Mountain Hacienda. Today is the first day in almost a week that I might be able to go down and visit my horse!
Miss Bianca
@OzarkHillbilly:
We don’t have sand up here during the winter, but we have two woodstoves going most of the time and a lot of coffee grounds. I have found that ash and coffee grounds work great as a snow-melting combination!
satby
@oldgold: ?
dilbert dogbert
fiddle neck delinda est!!!
jnfr
Outdoor gardening is still just a dream here at my house in Colorado, where temps have been in negative numbers and single digits for a week and there’s still snow on the ground.
I am enjoying the basil growing in my office Aerogarden, though.
J R in WV
Our daffydills are all up 6 inches or so, and the Helleboros (aka Lenten Rose) are booming all over the place in several colors.
Wood Frogs are frantically reproducing in the tiny pond by the front door, croaking and splishing and laying eggs whenever it warms up a bit. Not today, surprisingly, as it’s near 50 and sunny all day so far.
ETA: I suspect I feel a nap coming on… this morning one of the dogs I have bragged on jumped acrobatically into bed, landed right on my groin. Usually sneaks in very delicately, dunno why so violent an arrival today. Not a good wake-up call~!!~
hotshoe
I have a few volunteer sunflowers coming up; I’ve never planted them or taken care of them. I think this summer I should get seeds and plant a whole patch on purpose. Ukraine!