:: opens up thread, blows off the dust ::
Anyone doing any gardening now that spring is finally, finally here?
My husband and I spent the last week cleaning up the yard. Since I wasn't at home most of 2017 (I was in NYC for work), the garden plots were neglected and overrun with weeds. I had to prune back my dwarf Japanese weeping cherry pretty sharply; it should have been pruned in the fall and was a mess. It looks much better now. I also tidied my herb bed, replanted the oregano and thyme that didn't winter over, pruned back the leggy rosemary and sage bushes and treated myself to a fennel plant and some lavender. We gave our two big sawgrass plants their annual crewcuts, raked out the garden beds and mulched them, and pulled up all the thistle plants that were taking over the veggie patch. We also officially threw in the towel on our fig tree: for the third year in a row, it has died back to the roots. We've tried three different methods of covering it for the winter but none worked. It would have probably grown back vigorously this summer, same as always, but since it will only bear fruit on two year-old wood, it was a lot of labor for nothing. So we dug it up and tossed it.
My veggie bed lay fallow all last year but sprouted a fine crop of thistles on its own. We pulled all those up, and my husband is supposed to build me a crop cage to protect my tomatoes against both deer and my nemesis, the local gray squirrel population. While I wait for him to do that, I got deck boxes started with radish, lettuce and pea seedlings. We are off to the Oregon coast next week to celebrate our 25th anniversary, but I'm hoping to get the in-ground veggies started before the month ends. I moved some hosta from a failed attempt at a border at the back of the yard into my ornamental garden next to the deck and installed a couple of new plants: a Brother Stefan hosta, a pair of Black Knight delphinium and some coreopsis. Everything looks very pretty and neat now.
So...how does your garden grow?
