Morning Houseplant Sun

I love how the morning sun lights up the houseplants in my huge (east-facing) dining room window.

Backlighting brings out so many different colors that otherwise remain hidden within the leaves.   Like the yellows between the veins in these fleshy orchid cactus paddles.  ("Leaves" doesn't quite sound right, but "paddles" is my term, not a technical one!)

And the green in the otherwise fuzzy silver kalanchoe.  And the reds and golds in the dark purple setcreasea:

And now, off to take a deep breath and uncover my peach tree so she can bask in the sun.  Hopefully her "tent" kept her flowers safe so that I can enjoy a few peaches later this summer.  Time will tell...

All Tucked In

 I know this looks a little pathetic...

... especially in the fading evening light.  But I want peaches this year, darn it!  So I've covered up the fully-in-flower peach tree, and am keeping my fingers crossed that tonight's cold temps and potential frost don't completely do in my chances for enjoying some sweet, juicy fruit this summer.  Stay tuned...

Spring Emerges--by Leaps and Bounds!

With the warm temperatures this week, spring has not so much been emerging as it has been bursting! Early tulips, daffodils, a sore back, and the lawn-and-leaf bags* lined up on my treelawn are the usual first harbingers of spring in my garden.  But as I worked around the yard today, I noticed quite a few signs of "mid spring" making themselves known.  Here's an assortment:

Blooms on my peach tree

Buds on one of the currants

The pretty, purplish stems of lovage as it first makes its appearance

Cherry buds

Cherry blossoms

Apple buds, with a pretty shadow of the espaliered plant on the fence behind

Lonicera sempervirens showing off its first few flower buds

Newly emerging tree peony leaves

Sedum, cheerfully peeking out from a pocket in a strawberry jar

Most of these photos were taken as I weeded and mulched yesterday.  I also pulled out a great many plants--details on that will be posted later--in an effort to simplify my design.  And I started on my spring plantings of carrots, onions, shallots, lettuces and the like.  

Of course, there is still more to be done.  I plan to put in a little bit of an edging wall in the front yard, to make the garden there look a little more finished.  (The aforementioned neighbors should like that!)  In late May, the tomatoes, beans, peppers, eggplants and other heat-loving crops will need to be put in as well.  But for now, it's enough to appreciate all of the fresh faces of spring.  Happy spring gardening to all!

*Yes, I still compost.  However, I've learned from experience that certain things--some ornamental grasses, all woody plants, and perennial weeds--just do not break down enough in my little compost bins.  (And those pyracantha branches have scratched me up enough the first time around, so I see no reason to let their half-decayed thorns stab my fingers while I spread finished compost.)  The city's compost piles are big enough to heat them all up and turn them into black gold, however, so they end up on the curb in the spring.

The Weirdness Chronicles: Spring Leaf Tear

I've spent a decent amount of time this spring pulling what I think of as "dead leaf collars" off of spring bulb foliage.  You know how the green spears of foliage come up and pierce through leaves, only to get choked and strangled by the wiry veins on those same leaves when they get larger?  That's what I mean.

I assumed that this piercing only happened to the brittle inside parts of dead/decaying leaves.  But then I discovered this:

 

I barely understand why the dead leaves get pierced (I always kind of assumed that they were somehow impaled upon the young foliage via the wind we get so regularly here) but I definitely do not get how a thick, healthy heuchera leaf falls prey to the pointy tip of tulip foliage.  Heuchera leaves are on fairly bendy stems... why wouldn't the tulip foliage just push it off to the side, if anything, as it sprouts and grows?

I confess, I do not get this at all.  What in the world is going on here?  Do any of my more scientific-minded friends have any good answers for me?  The question of "Why," is driving me a little crazy on this beautiful spring day!

Right Now, I Have an Ugly Garden

There is a lot of discussion right now in the garden blogosphere about "ugly" gardens.  More specifically, about "ugly" vegetable gardens.  Without wading into that fray, I will simply say that I believe that form and function are not mutually exclusive... nor does something have to be useful to be beautiful, or vice-versa.

I will also say that a garden does not have to be weed-infested or poorly designed to be ugly at certain times of the year.  Case in point:  My own front yard garden, shown in these pre-spring-cleanup photos that were taken this evening:

Two views:  From the top of my steps (above)

and from my driveway looking toward the steps (below)

I am pretty sure that the current state of my front yard garden horrifies at least a couple of my neighbors.  One couple has gorgeous traditional borders, but admits that naturalistic gardens are not their thing and that they don't much care for grasses at all.  Another neighbor, Ms Type A Personality, whips out the Roundup at the slightest hint of renegade greenery, and keeps things neat as a pin in the block-lined beds near her porch. 

Unstated, though understood, is that my yard feels a little TOO messy to all of them.  I like all three of these neighbors, for the record, but this is the only time of the year when I agree with them in regards to my exhuberant front yard garden!

So why do I let my garden get to this state?  Several reasons.  First and foremost, saving all of this cleanup work until the spring saves me from my own enthusiasm.  It's still March--in Cleveland--for heaven's sake!  I have no business doing much of anything outdoors besides some late winter pruning, and planting the earliest of edible crops.  But if I didn't have spring cleanup chores left to do, I would most certainly be outside anyway... getting myself and my garden into trouble.

Second, this garden IS my front yard, which means that fall cleanup would leave a boring, barren landscape for me to view during a long Northeast Ohio winter.  Perennial skeletons poke up out of the snow and make interesting mound designs in the white stuff.  Buff-colored grasses add some height and movement (it's very windy here) and even provide a nice complement to some of my early flowers like the 'Ivory Prince' hellebores shown above.

Thirdly, plant detrius helps me to overwinter some marginal plants here in the front yard.  Unfortunately, this is NOT the year that my 'Black & Blue' salvia finally, miraculously overwinters (boo!) but various grasses--like the carex albula 'Frosty Curls' shown above, and nasella (aka stipa) tenuissima--regularly come back for me each spring if I leave them alone in the fall.  And in 2008 I lost one of my caryopteris by cutting it back too early in the year.

Last, but not least, I might miss out on a few miracles of spring if I wasn't out in the yard doing cleanup.  The feeling of elation at picking up a mat of wet oak leaves and finding my little species tulips peaking through the ground is something I would hate to miss.  So is seeing the otherworldly, deep purple sprouts of sea kale.

And if I hadn't been out working in the yard this evening, I would never have noticed the first official front yard blooms of 2010, shown above.  'Purple Dragon' lamium fills up the circular bed that showcases a cutleaf Japanese maple... but the delicate blooms on this branch were on the side facing my neighbor's house, and so they would have escaped my notice entirely.


So for all of these reasons, I embrace having an "ugly garden" throughout the month of March.  And as I dirty my fingernails and grimace at the squish of decaying leaves between my fingertips and palms, I look at my ugly garden and smile... knowing that come summer, it will be beautiful and exhuberant once again.