Celebrating Spring by Winter Sowing

Remember when I mentioned winter sowing back on the winter solstice? Well, I wouldn't start my winter sowing quite that early, but I did start it in late February last year.

This year, I feel like I'm way behind. The tulips that I planted in the fall are already shooting up in the front yard. Hellebores are blooming, and sprouts of everything from Jacob's ladder to cardinalflower are showing.

Some people, like Colleen, are already exulting in the appearance of their winter sown sprouts--and rightfully so! But until today I had no little "ghetto greenhouses" lined up along the side of my house. With the spring equinox right around the corner, and my fingers itching to get dirty, it was definitely time to rectify that situation.

I am a little short on winter sowing containers right now, so I started with the perennials and hardier annuals. Somehow, most of the seed varieties I picked were teensy-tiny, like these. Luckily, the seed companies tend to really pack a lot of these small seeds into each packet so I didn't have too much trouble scattering them in the container. When you winter sow and get too many seedlings in a container, you can plant them out in chunks. The strong ones eventually crowd out the weaker ones as they fight for nutrients.

So far, I have winter sowed the following: alchemilla erythropoda, asclepias incarnata 'Cinderella,' Hungarian Blue breadseed poppy, ruta graveolens, allium cernuum, coleus 'Wizard Velvet Red,' nicotiana sylvestris and echinops bannaticus 'Blue Glow.'

The coleus is an experiment because winter sowing it seems like a hit-or-miss thing. The rest of the seeds should do okay for me, I hope. In a few weeks, I will find out whether my winter sown seeds will sprout... taking the leap of faith to sow seeds on the spring equinox seems appropriate in light of the hopeful nature of the season.

A Young Dove's Fancy

At first, I was sure that these two mourning doves were fighting... they were pecking each other about the face, and puffing up their feathers. However, it soon became apparent that I was thinking about 180 degrees in the wrong direction! Afterwards, the male sat around puffing out his feathers for a minute or two, and then began to groom the female around her neck.

Spring must be closer than I had thought. :) I took a few pictures of the grooming, and wished them good luck before I closed the curtain. (Mourning doves are terrible nest-builders...)

In the Spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin’s breast;
In the Spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest;

In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnish’d dove;
In the Spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.

- from "Locksley Hall," by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day - March

What a difference a month makes! The snow is gone, the birds are singing, and I finally have something to contribute to Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day.

I admit, the first picture has nothing to do with blooms OR buds, but I adore these little rosettes that appear on the ends of the fleshy stems of 'Voodoo' and 'Fuldaglut' sedums. They look like tiny flowers--and it's March, so we get to take some creative license with Bloom Day here in Zone 6, right?

It's raining so heavily here that I couldn't get good new pictures. So here's an updated picture of the same old white hellebore that keeps making me smile, along with today's lists.

In Bloom:
'Pine Knot Strain' hellebore, white
unnamed white crocus with purple throat
common yellow orchid (indoors)
'Vodka' wax begonia (indoors--overwintered)

In Bud:
'Pine Knot Strain hellebores, dark pink
unnamed purple crocus
'Anne Greenaway' lamium (admittedly, these could be frozen buds from January that will never bloom)
'Bing,' 'Northstar,' and one other cherry tree
unnamed pink rhododendron

My Favorite Gardening Shoes

In answer to Carol's Gardening Shoe Challenge, I am posting a picture of my favorite gardening shoes. Here they are--and the best part is, I got to wear them outside today! In March!

They're not quite in shape yet--once they make their regular season debut, you'll see a bit of copper showing at the tips. Between gardening and my sand volleyball leagues, they will look much different come July. :)

Trash Day Dreams

Inspired by one of Mr. Brownthumb's amusing posts, I headed out into my yard this evening to pick up the trash that blew into my garden and was trapped there by the winter snows. It's too soon to really tidy the garden, as temperatures are falling back into the 20s this weekend. I might as well allow the clusters of fallen leaves and remains of last year's plants to insulate the sprouts at this point, since the snowcover is no longer around to provide protection.

I did notice that one of my hellebores is beginning to bloom, and I'm doubly excited because I made a wonderful discovery when I leaned down to inspect the white flower at close range. I thought I had lost its neighboring hellebore over the summer, but I spied distinctive little green fingers reaching their dark, sawtoothed edges out of the ground! It must just be testing my patience.

As I worked in the back, I noticed that my little creeping sedum, 'Chubby Fingers,' was beginning to green up again. It did turn a frosty green in the cold, but was nowhere near as interesting as Kylee's ghostly, blanched sedum. (Kylee, by the way, is herself a Blackswamp Girl--she lives maybe 10 minutes away from my parents' house. Small world!)

I know that many people like it, but I detest this retaining wall block in the same way that I detest all things plastic and particleboard. If I had the money for it, this would be a stacked stone wall--maybe giant chunks of sandstone, like those once used as edging by Rick over at Whispering Crane Institute.

Alas, I didn't buy a winning MegaMillions ticket last week, so I'm stuck with the stacked block. But the spilling sedum is giving me some ideas for making it much more livable. The bed it "holds up" is definitely stable enough for me to remove the top two layers of stone temporarily this spring. I will space the blocks much more irregularly, and plant some of my sedum sieboldii along with more of this 'Chubby Fingers' in the gaps between.

In any garden, I like it when it appears that nature is taking over in spite of man's best efforts. It's comforting somehow, and helping the plants invade the faux stone wall just seems like it's the right thing to do. Besides, there is plenty of cement in my tiny city garden already... and never too much green!