Thursday
I wrote this entry this morning but forgot to hit the publish button until after I came inside this evening 
This time of year the weather is a mixed bag. There will be several stretches of glorious spring like days, but then in the blink of an eye the colder temps return. In addition to the temperature swings, we also get periods of steady rain for days making everything muddy and mushy for a while. And then the high winds show up. All this to say, I try to capitalize on spring garden cleanup when the weather is nice and then bide my time until it comes around again. Yesterday the weather was glorious and today is predicted to be much the same.
Yesterday morning as I was making my garden walk about, I saw another early daffodil blooming in the Lemon Garden. I easily id'd that one as 'Rapture' and made up a new slate label for it. I opened the greenhouse doors and louvre vent window and watered the seedlings as is becoming another morning routine. Right now most of my seed starting efforts are in the house, but the onions and foxgloves that have germinated have been moved out to the greenhouse. I heard that a common mistake that new greenhouse owners make is to keep it buttoned up. What really should be done is to open it up during the day and close it back up at night. So, that is what I'm doing. Well, I open it up and it is usually Mike who closes it.
Then I met up with two gardening friends for lunch. Wednesday's are Bonnie's half days at work, and I knew she would be working in my gardens when she got home, so I left after we ate instead of doing the craft that they had planned for the afternoon.
Yep, got home just as Bonnie was coming over. She is so funny - the first thing that she did was to repot my one and only African violet after seeing Laura do it on the morning Garden Answer video. Then we worked in tandem on raking leaves out of the garden areas. I rake the leaves to an open spot and also crawl in to hand pull leaves caught in the base of shrubs and perennials, and then Bonnie rakes them on to her tarp and drags them over to the drainfield where she dumps them in a big pile to compost. Works well. As I'm finding very aggravating though, I have to stop about every 15 minutes to sit down for a little rest. Bonnie keeps plugging away like the energizer bunny.
I also got more ratty hellebores foliage cut back. I either sit or get on my hands and knees to do this. I first have to hand pull out accumulated fall leaves that have caught in the clumps to get at the ratty hellebores foliage. This process is tedious, but I actually like the tediousness. There is something very soothing to me doing that kind of gardening chore vs the chores that are more dependent on brute strength.
Well, it is about time to "get crackin" as the Brits say, and what I hear in Monty Don's voice in my head. Also rolling around in my head is Annie's phrase "Well, missy, that garden cleanup won't get done by itself" 
Wednesday
While working in the Lemon Garden yesterday, I was making mental notes of what I wanted to do there this season. The Lemon Garden was created in 2016 and is located beyond the back patio along the wood line. The general shape is a rectangular free form and is about 60 feet long by 24 feet wide. I wanted a garden area to showcase soft yellow and white blooming plants. I do like themes 
The small groups of daffodils that bloom in soft yellows and whites are scattered throughout. It would look nicer if I had two or even three groups clustered together that bloom at the same time instead of a lone clump at intervals. So, last night I went on the internet hunt for varieties to add. I checked my usual go tos - Brent and Becky's Bulbs and John Scheepers, then found a new to me source - Quality Daffodils for the American Garden (qdaffs.us) that has a fantastic selection. A great feature of their website catalog is that you can search by bloom time. I was like a kid in a candy store. I have varieties in mind to purchase for planting next fall to get those bloom time groupings.
One end has filled in nicely with the yellow foxgloves (digitalis grandiflora) that have spread from pass alongs given to me by good friends David and Pat. There are a few hellebores 'Golden Lotus' in that area too, but there needs to be more. It is hard to find 'Golden Lotus' these days, but I recently found another yellow variety called 'California Dreaming' on the road trip to Black Creek Greenhouse. I purchased five. I think I'll like these even better because the flowers are consistently solid yellow vs the many variations of 'Golden Lotus', some of which have reddish margin accents - not what I want in this themed garden. In fact, now that they have reached blooming stage and I can see which variation they are, I'll relocate the ones with the reddish margin accents. I'll probably give those to Bonnie for her gardens. The darker reds and more primary color palette blooms really suit her gardens at the cottage.
I have several herbaceous peonies - two whites 'Amalia Olson' and 'Mother's Choice, and a soft yellow 'Lemon Chiffon'. They are hanging in there, but haven't taken off or matured at all yet. Also two yellow intersectionals. I may relocate them a bit closer to the front of the garden area - maybe they aren't getting enough sun with the shade from the wood line.
There are several shrubs in this garden. The calycanthus 'Athens' is doing great. There are also two mock oranges - both are alive, but not really flourishing. I'll be pruning these after they bloom, albeit sparsely, this spring. I'll also spread compost around the base and fertilize them several times between April and July. Google searches answer all my questions about how to care for them I also have two azaleas that were gifts and one of the reasons for starting the themed Lemon Garden. These are heavily deer damaged and may not be salvageable. One looks like it is completely dead. The other looks like it may have a few signs of life, but the shrub is reduced to a few mere twigs. I'm not exactly sure what to do with it other than construct a deer caging around it and give it compost and fertilizer. Maybe it will rebound, but even so, it will be years. A shrub that has been on my wish list for this garden for a long time is a Camellia 'Lemon Glow'. I bit the bullet and ordered one a few days ago. It ships as a 3 gallon plant and should arrive soon.
I have a pretty yellow rose that I see is starting to leaf out. Last year it was deer damaged. Like the azalea, I need to get some kind of deer caging around it. I just purchased Rose Tone for fertilizing the few roses I have too.
The propane tank for the kitchen stove is at the back of this garden. I put a nice sectional trellis in front of it and am attempting to cover it with honeysuckle 'Scentsation'. I realized that even if it fills in, the coverage is mostly higher - i.e. not starting at ground level. Last spring I purchased a decorative panel from Home Depot that should do the trick, but I haven't installed it yet. That is on the to do list to get done soon.
Several of the perennials that I have tried in this garden have failed - the ones that come to mind are trollius 'New Moon', campanula 'Takion White', various columbines, polygonatum biflorum, trillium lutea, uvularia... I tried that pretty trollius three times, the conditions just aren't suitable for it. Columbines in general just don't seem to grow for me beyond the first season, or if they do, they are short lived. The polygonatum, trillium, and uvularia were purchased at Black Creek one year when they were carrying woodland natives. None of them made it and I noticed that it was a one and done for Black Creek. The campanula and a few other perennial casualties were more than likely from lack of consistent watering. I am thrilled to have the irrigation system completely repaired for this upcoming gardening season. I will have much greater odds for getting the gardens to thrive.
The few perennials that are doing well are the foxgloves mentioned earlier, a baptisia 'Lemon Meringue', and a few epimediums. There are a few aruncus too, but they are struggling.
A big goal is to fill in skimpy patchy areas. The plants that I have in mind for this are winter aconites, celandine poppies, primula vulgaris, lady's mantle, and sweet woodruff. The general idea is to make sweeping swaths, or in the case of sweet woodruff, fill in as a ground cover below and between other perennials. In the UK, they purchase and plant winter aconites "in the green", but here in the US the only source seems to be bulbs that you plant out in the fall. There are a few Mid Atlantic gardening friends who have celandine poppies in abundance, so I'm hoping to start those with pass alongs. Primula vulgaris, the simple common primrose, is another plant that seems more popular and readily available in the UK. There are a few mail order sources in the US, like White Flower Farm, but that means pricey. I did find a source for seeds though so I'll try my hand at growing them from seed. Black Creek usually carries lady's mantle and sweet woodruff, so that will be on the list for the road trip in April.
I love the Lemon Garden. A few tweaks, consistent watering, and fertilizing are all that is really needed to get it to what I envision it to be.
Tuesday
The early daffodils have started to bloom in the Lemon Garden. This is where I have a collection of named cultivars that bloom in soft yellows and whites. I get a sampling of 10-20 bulbs of each vs planting in big drifts. As always, it is so hard to keep them labeled and this year I am bound and determined to verify them.
Several years ago I marked out 5 foot increments with metal tent stakes along the back edge and tied green flag tape to them. They are either completely buried in leaves or like most of my marking attempts, they have disappeared altogether. I also sunk mini blind labels in front of each grouping, but the majority of those are gone too. Thank goodness I have my fail safe - my homegrown database where one of the fields is the 5 foot increment it was planted in.
I soon realized that those 5 foot increments are subjective now that the metal tent stakes aren't visible. I then went into detective mode, hunting for any mini blind labels that were still there. I looked up what 5 foot section I had marked in the database for those, then cross referenced with relative positions for the ones in bloom. I also looked up the blooming times in a great online daffodil reference called DaffSeek - early, early-mid, mid, mid-late, and late. I then entered that information in another field in my database. So, it became a process of elimination - list all the daffodils in the known 5 foot section, then filter for early bloom or even early-mid bloom. Then I compared my photo of the bloom to the photos in DaffSeek. Tada!!! I'm pretty confident that I have the correct ids.
All three are Division 1 - Trumpet miniatures. I love all daffodils, but I am especially drawn to miniatures, Division 5 triandrus, and Division 6 cyclamineus. Currently in bloom are 'Small Talk', 'Gipsy Queen', and 'Elka'. I just made labels for them for my new slate marking system, and am heading out to put them in the ground now.
I also started raking out the accumulated fall leaves from the Lemon Garden area. The weather has finally turned a spring corner again today, and should be nice the rest of the week. I'm dealing with weight and other Type 1 diabetic complications, so my stamina and muscles are the pits. I'm addressing it and pushing through as best I can, but right now it feels like that is my full time job 
Gardening is such a physical effort, well at least for me it is, so I have to do it in small stretches with frequent breaks. I can go for about an hour with a few short sitting breaks, then go again after a longer break. What is that saying, how do you tackle an elephant? One bite at a time.
Monday
Late last week Bonnie and I were talking about the shrubs in the gardens and making plans for their maintenance - something we've not ever focused on before. I guess the topic came up, like most of our garden focus these days, from a recent Garden Answer video. Laura had been pruning her hydrangeas and explaining how to do it as she went along. She has also been cutting back her buddleias and caryopteris during her general winter cleanup.
It seems that the recommendation is to prune out one third of most shrubs each year, especially the shrubs that need major or even a bit of rejuvenation. It also seems that a good time to do this is in winter before new growth gets underway. I have never done that. So, Bonnie and I talked about the shrubs that I have and what we plan on doing with them. We'll prune one third for many of them, general prune remaining branches, add compost around the bases, add slow release fertilizer, and apply mulch.
Last fall I took the loppers to a really overgrown lilac by the front porch. It is a korean small leaf lilac 'Palibin' that I planted many years ago. It is dwarf compared to the more traditional lilacs, and although it doesn't get too tall, it does keep spreading wider and wider. I lopped off a hefty percentage of the width completely down to the ground, but didn't dig up the roots. Bonnie spent a few hours in the freezing cold late last week digging them out. I heard her out there, but only went out myself when she opened up the front door and called out for me to come see what I thought about it. Just a few minutes standing there had me chilled to the bone. How she can stand that cold is beyond me. Anyway, it looked good to me and even better because she was the one who did the heavy grunt work. As strong as she is, even she struggled with it. We decided that even though the overgrown width has been dealt with, we should still prune what is left
This is a list of shrubs to deal with:
1 Buddleia (Lavender Cupcake) - *Notes prune entire shrub nearly to the ground; *Notes Bonnie has one at her cottage that we need to do too
6 Callicarpa (4 Issai, 1 Profusion, 1 Snow Storm) - *Notes prune all Issai nearly to the ground
5 Calycanthus (1 Aprodite, 1 Athens, 1 Venus, 2 species) - *Notes all thriving
2 Camellia - *Notes both severely deer damaged
2 Caryopteris - *Notes alive but not thriving at all
2 Deutzia (1 Nikko, 1 pink) - *Notes Nikko thriving, pink immature, new last year
1 Fothergilla (Mount Airy) - *Notes doing well
3 Hydrangeas (1 Blue Wave, 1 Quick Fire, 1 Vanilla Strawberry) - *Notes Blue Wave severely deer damaged
4 Kalmia (Sarah) - *Notes definitely needs benefit from fertilizer
3 Philadelphus (1 Minnesota Snowflake, 1 Snowbelle, 1 Snow Dwarf) - *Notes doing ok
3 Sarcococca aka Sweet Box - *Notes doing well
1 Symphoricarpos (Kordes) - *Notes doing ok
6 Syringa - 3 semi dwarf (Palibin, Bloomerang Dark Purple, Miss Kim) and 3 traditional (Sensation, noid purple, noid white)
2 Viburnums (1 Koreanspice, 1 Blackhaw) - *Notes doing ok
1 Weigela - *Notes extremely overgrown
1 Spirea - *Notes doing ok
3 Flowering Almonds - *Notes immature, new last year
various azaleas and rhododendrons - *Notes definitely needs benefit from fertilizer
I wonder if this can all get done in a marathon garden work weekend
Sunday
I've been going through my old seed stash and making a plan for sowing all those seeds that were either bought or passed along at seed swaps. As far as flower seeds go, many are individual varieties that I've wanted to try. However, zinnias and morning glorys are a different matter altogether. It is clear to me that I must love zinnias and morning glorys, or at least the idea of them.
I have 13 different kinds of zinnias in the old stash, the oldest is from 2013. I also purchased 3 new ones this year. All but one are named cultivars in shades of purple, pink, white, green, and most recently, yellow. I plan to sow all of them. If any germinate, I have an idea where they will be planted.
I must REALLY be drawn to morning glorys because I have 21 different kinds, the oldest is from 2007! I also have multiple packets of moonflower. Most are named cultivars, but 4 are noids with labels "pretty lavender", "back deck", "potting shed", "japanese". I plan to sow all of these too. I know where I would put a few, but if a lot of them germinate, I have no idea where they will be planted. I would have to think of something. My mind is already turning ideas over, but no sense putting the cart before the horse.
For both zinnias and morning glorys, the recommendation is to direct sow. I read that they can be started indoors 3 to 4 weeks before the last frost, and that is what I will do. It will give me more insight as far as germination goes. If any seeds do germinate and grow, I will be able to collect seeds of my favorites.
Anyway, I realize that my tendency has been to acquire seeds but never actually sow them 
The only seeds that I've sown and had success with in the past are tomatoes and one very satisfying effort at growing lambs ears. Those initial lambs ears grown from seed about 15 years ago have survived and have spread nicely in the Cottage Garden. Attempts at other things have either not germinated at all, or germinated but neglected to thin, up pot, or plant out. I am pretty inspired to turn that around, sow everything that I have, nurture anything that germinates, and finally gain some practical first hand knowledge about the process.
