Thank you, commentor JeffG166:
2.10.2023
It’s Spring in Philadelphia.
This year’s pot of tulips. They are early due to the mild winter.
2.23.2023
3.8.2023
Todays garden shot.
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We’ve got a really good burst of daffodils coming up in the sunny south-facing bed in front of the house — I suspect descendants of the yellow ones that were here when we bought the place thirty years ago, which got divided & replanted (not always by me, because squirrels) two years ago. The doughty remnants of that original drift had gotten as far as setting fat yellow buds before last week’s (no) surprise nor’easter, but the ice didn’t last long, so they’re not even very frost-nipped.
Next come the white / pink & white daffs I’ve haphazardly planted over the years in the other front bed (behind the huge ancient lilac which shades them a bit at this time of year), then the crowd along the north-facing back chainlink fence, and finally — but not for two or three weeks yet — the ones along the western side of the property, which is heavily shaded by our neighbors’ oak trees. Our few forsythia are curb-side on that edge, and Murphy the Trickster God willing they’ll bloom just as the daffodils wind up… and the small curb-side lilac bushes start to set buds.
What’s going on in your garden (planning / memories / discoveries), this week?
Baud
Then suddenly… weeds!
sab
JPL
It’s going to be in the mid-forties today, which is twenty degrees below normal. brrr My weeping cherry tree is blooming, but I fear the freeze tonight will destroy the buds.
sab
When I first married my husband he looked in the yard and asked ” what is that yellow flower?” It was a daffodil. That is when I decided that however tired I was he would never work in my garden. Being well intentioned does not mean that you know what the fuck you are doing.
sab
OT but Friday was grandparents day at my granddaughters school. I couldn’t make it ( taxes) but Grandpa did and they had a lovely time. So glad that schools do this. Means the world to participants .
sab
Squirrels eating the tops off my crocuses only when I don’t fill the squirel/bird feeder.
sab
What are the guys in the third picture?
Geo Wilcox
@sab: The caption says they are tulips.
Barbara
@sab: Does going to visit the school mean Grandpa is feeling a lot better these days?
We tilled and amended soil yesterday. Still too worried about subfreezing temps to actually plant outside.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I’m jealous. We had snow yesterday, and right now, it’s 19 degrees.
@sab: I’m jealous of Grandparents Day too! My son and DIL decided not to have children, which is their right, obviously. But I’m still jealous.
raven
@JPL: The blueberries are going to get wiped out.
Charluckles
We did a lot of daffodils in pots last fall and today our kitchen is an explosion of the cheery yellow flowers. The scent is wonderful and the spouse is very happy. This will be a new annual routine for us.
Jeffg166
@sab: Tulips that had been wrapped in newspaper in a plastic bag for the winter. They turn green when exposed to direct sunlight.
HinTN
It’s 23 F this morning and was 26 F yesterday. Several years ago I got some of my long deceased grandmother’s prize daffodils and moved then here. They’ve done well and last week I transplanted some of each into an “Easter Basket” near the house. The greens seem fine and are liking the sunshine after the rain. Hooray for Big Orange basketball!
different-church-lady
I was under the impression daffodils are poisonous to mammals, and that squirrels know this and will leave them alone. Thus I saw a recommendation to plant them next to your tulips.
It seemed to work, except that my neglect means all the tulips are long gone. But the daffodils are thriving without my attention.
evodevo
My hyacinths and daffodils were out, along with the forsythia, but they got nipped by our 16 degree overnight temps this week, after 65 degrees last weekend…oh well…the tulips are budding, but not out…don’t know how they faired. It was 55 on Thurs and 14 this AM. Extreme even for KY
Kay
I could be AL’s neighbor- the oaks in my yard shade the surrounding yards – they’re huge.
Oaks are kind of a pain- they shade out everything around them, they’re greedy with water and nutrients and the leaves are difficult to compost and can retard the growth of other plants if you spread them or chop them BUT I’m reading this and they’re really pretty amazing:
sab
@Barbara: Yes he is. That little girl is the center of his world. I hope he lives for decades so that she has him there. They are so cute together.
sab
@sab: I hope he lives for me and him, but my favorite grandfather died when I was six. Granddaughter is nine now. They need and love each other.
WaterGirl
I am always delighted when the first daffodils come up. Not this year, though. We have had COLD weather, and last night it was 5 degrees, -1 with wind chill. Between that and the fattest bunnies you have ever seen eating the leaves on all my bulbs, it’s going to be a massacre. Which makes me very sad.
TerryC
While I await the arrival of 450 trees and bushes for this spring’s planting on my arboretum/disc golf courses, I have been creating my first Frankentrees! I’m grafting different kinds of scion wood varieties onto single trees out in the field. For example, yesterday I grafted a Summer Rambo Apple and a Sansa Apple onto a crabapple. My most diverse tree so far is a native plum with two cherry varieties, two peach varieties, two nectarine varieties, one apricot variety, and two plum varieties all on a single tree. Got my fingers crossed.
WaterGirl
@TerryC: Wow.
RAM
We had a bunch of snowdrops and crocus blooming and a lot of daffodils coming up and then for the past two mornings it’s been windy and 12 and 15 degrees F., respectively, here in northern Illinois, so have a feeling the blooms have gotten a real kick in the teeth. Too damned cold to go out and look.
oatler
The Weed Guy sprayed our yard last week to eradicate the Yavapai Daffodils, and now we’ve noticed the weeds are showing effects of aging and physical infirmity. The despair is palpable though a Thursday shower invigorated them. The voices in our heads say to call the Weed Guy to complain but we prefer to outlive them.
oldgold
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, William Wordsworth
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
StringOnAStick
@different-church-lady: Many tulips have a fairly short lifespan, while daffodils seem to be longer lived. In fancy British gardens, the tulips for the big display are dug up later that year and transferred into wilder naturalizing beds since their blooms the next year won’t be as good and they will fade away entirely in a few years. I’ve had much better luck with species tulips living longer but they are much smaller in bloom and greenery, many get categorised as rock garden tulips. Mostly I do smaller species daffodils because it suits my wilder native plant garden style and the local deer population.
StringOnAStick
@TerryC: Wow, you are obviously quite skilled at tree grafting! I salute you. I bet your disc course is gorgeous.
Rachel Bakes
@Kay: Living in CT lots of oaks. That book made me feel better about them (although not so much in November when they still haven’t shed all their leaves. Doug Tammany is now one of my must reads whenever a new book is published.
StringOnAStick
We had a lovely sunny day yesterday so I moved 3 groundcover veronica’s to the edge of the Japanese maple and where I planted a bunch of bulbs last fall. If the timing is good the bulbs will poke through and bloom when the veronica is a sea of blue blooms. Now I realize it will help slow down the bulbs by shading the soil from the spring sun, so extra bonus there.
Any ground not in the sun still has snow and/or is still frozen since we’re getting the northern edge of the atmospheric rivers hitting CA; I guess I won’t be putting in any peas until April this year. Might still get a snow dusting here next week and much more in the Cascades. Today it’s dark and rain is predicted, which could take care of the snow lingering in the veggie garden area.
laura
Yesterday I bought two climbing sweetpeas- one a white with blue edging and three different big fancy poppies and it raked the raised bed they’re going into; but there they sit on the kitchen counter because the rain started before I could dig in some fresh soil amendments. As much as the rain is needed, it’s “A Lot” in the middle of the atmospheric rivers.
Gvg
iI am of the opinion that the chestnut blight may have done more damage to our ecosystem than we can know, because we were not measuring things like that back then. The chestnut fed a lot of animals and I do not see how a forest could feed as many of grow them as big ever after. I suspect that bears, deer and moose are smaller now and fewer just because the chestnut is gone. Squirrels and rabbits and raccoons would be impacted as well.MagdaInBlack
@Dorothy A. Winsor: It’s so weird that you got snow and I’m about 12 miles southeast and got none
Accuweather kept telling me “snow will end in X minutes” and I was looking outside thinking “What snow?”
StringOnAStick
@Gvg: Interesting, and sounds quite likely. I noticed since we moved to central OR that deer are tiny here compared to Colorado, but when you look at the browse available in Ponderosa forests, it’s pretty spare. Probably a smaller deer species. In Golden, CO we had roving bands of elk that weren’t that concerned about humans, but here they stay far from human habitation and are very wary. Chestnuts are packed with a lot more calories than what replaced them, since nuts are such concentrated energy sources.