Good ole' April showers.

Today we had beautiful April showers... enough to fill up the rain barrel. I need to put out the second one. The new mulch looks wonderful and the time seems to have been perfect. With the rain comes a lot of new growth. The clematis, dianthus and allium are getting closer to bloom. The big show currently is the tulips, creeping phlox, grape hyacinth, lily-of-the-valley, violets, violas and daffodils. The trout lily faded fast after last weekend's heat.

April heatwave...

Today the temperature hit 86 degrees... sort of strange considering that a few days ago it was 40 degrees cooler! Oh well, i managed to flow with it pretty well... lots of sunscreen, water and breaks. I remulched the beds near the paperbark maple... and also the main flower bed (almost... i still have a bit more to go) A lot of weeding, digging and lugging. I figured that i carried at least 20 big buckets of mulch today... add that in with the 40 lb. bag of concrete mix. That explains why my back is achy. The concrete mix was used to repair some of the pavers on the back patio. A lot of chippy excavation had occured... so i had to pry up the pavers and then add gravel and concrete, and put the pavers back in place. I also brought out the first rain barrel and hooked it up to the downspout. I repaired (hopefully) two birdbaths that had leaks. I also buried a banana peal near the rose for extra added nutrients.

• Today i noticed that it appears that the quince is taking a year off from blooming... but the flowering almond looks close to bloom
• The orange tulips are looking fine and the small red ones are also blooming
• grape hyacinth in three colors continues to bloom
• five very hearty trout lily plants are having a banner year
• many varieties of daffodils continue to bloom
• new growth on the ferns, hosta, asparagus, heuchera, columbine, lily of the valley
  
• banner year for the freckles viola
  

New Bulbs Planted

This evening wile the temperatures were still very warm i decided to plant some bulbs that i had purchased. I planted 12 Anemones near the sidewalk, 15 fragrant Freesia near the bottom wall and 5 Crocosmia planted near the patio. The rain from earlier in the week helped a lot of the plants grow in quite a spurt. The orange tulips planted last fall look wonderful amidst all the purple and yellow currently in the garden.

I'm really enjoying the small buildings that i purchased last year. They are really nice structural elements in the garden.

April in the Garden

Today was warm, sunny with temps around 60 degrees. We unwrapped the tree trunks of their plastic protection... wish we would have had enough to protect the one lilac that the deer rubbed. But there is another shoot coming up from the ground to take the place of the rubbed branch.

I continues to do the obligatory dandelion digging... buckets of them. I also took to digging out some of the liriope that is spreading past where i want it. Liriope has quite the root structure and it took a lot of digging and prodding to get them out of the ground.

Currently in bloom:

• Dandelion (many varieties)
• Scilla
• Squill
• Wood Hyacinth
• Grape Hyacinth
• Crocus
• Violas