The Much Awaited Spring Returneth

The much awaited spring has finally arrived in all its magnificant splendor at Oak Hill Lodge. Eric and I have cleaned out the last of the gardens. An early snowfall, long before the last of the oak leaves chose to let go their grip from their comfortable branches, trapped them under the winter blanket. The good news is that they are extremely brittle, having weathered a hard Maine winter, so they break into mulch very quickly. The stonewall which runs along the driveway garden was displaced by our snowplow man, but that only gave me the provocation to move it up on the priority list to be rebuilt in my new "large rocks outside, small stones inside" method. Vanessa paid me a huge compliment by saying that she would have thought a landscaper had built the wall! The daffodils are doing just what I hoped. The older clumps have multiplied so that all the "singles" I planted are now good sized clumps of daffodils. I attest to them being just like a "savings account".. the more you plant, the more they multiply. It is wonderful! Eric built me a beautiful arbor for my climbing rose, transplanted from the front of the Lodge garden... It is just what I hoped for. I am hopeful that all of my roses will have survived. I was diligent about mounding the hay around their bases, and they all seem to be showing some green shoots. I am holding off trimming them severely, as I am not sure how much trimming they need. I took them all back by about 1/4 for now an will use the "wait and see" method. The very first buds of the Magnolia opened Mother's Day weekend, as did the first of my tulips. A very nice Mother's Day present indeed. My last big concern is my birches in the Event Field Garden. My four young birches suffered a lot of damage from the early winter ice storm. They were brought right to the ground from the weight of the ice. The largest of them has rebounded quite well, but the other three will need some help. We removed another row of pines from the area behind the lilac hedge hoping to allow more sunlight and more space for them to spring up. The next step will be to cable them to the strong white pines which grow behind them. We will slowly tighten the cables so as to correct their posture. I think most other plants survived unharmed. So far, so good. I have moved a lot of shrubs and perennials which were not in their best spots this spring. These are not called the "Trial and Error Gardens of Oak Hill Lodge" for nothing!