As mentioned previously, it has been a very cold spring here in Maine which is funny given the exceptionally mild winter we were blessed with. Even my first to show asparagus spears suffered the same fate. May 10th was the first day I would actually call warm and the nighttime temps stayed in the forties. This brought the azaleas into bloom and turned my magnolia from a one bloom wonder into full bloom splendor. Happy Henrietta looks particularly happy in her flower bed. Many of the hostas which the day before were barely visible, sprang up and began to unfurl their leaves for another season. So beautiful I could barely tear myself away to come to work.
The daffodils that Eric and I teamwork planted last fall are spectacular in the new beds! I had told Eric to not be stingy with the plantings as I had always tended to do in the past. This meant that instead of waiting a few years for a real impact, we got one the first spring! What FUN! Still lots of cleaning up to be done in the background woods, but I couldn't be happier with the progress we made last year.
The brilliant color of the hyacinths, especially when planted with yellow daffodils or red tulips can't help to bring a smile to my face. I tend to plant them along the edge of the bed so they look like little sentries guarding the bed.
One of my favorite seasons, I just love to plant pansies! I love their happy little faces greeting me just outside my door. I love their stalwart nature, no fear of the cold, no worries if covered by a late spring snow and always seeding in and popping up between the bricks of a sidewalk. Some of them even weather the heat of summer though that is not when they are at their best but now when we are all hungry for color and their happy faces. When combined with bare branches and pussy willows the arrangements are perfect trumpeters of the spring season.
The pulmonaria is blooming alongside the daffodils in the Humpty-Hump Bridge Garden, a.k.a. the Screen House Garden. I've been using the leaves which Eric shreds with his mower, picks up in the bagger and I add to the garden every fall as mulch. It is not the most attractive of mulches, but the goodness it adds to the soil is well worth the "not quite perfect" looks in the spring.
Each fall we plant between 250 and 500 daffodils bulbs in the gardens. Just like a savings account, the additions we make are rewarded with the multiplying bulbs of the older planting which are now becoming good sized clumps. Planting daffodils in the hosta beds is a perfect combination as the dying foliage of the daffs is mostly hidden by the emerging hostas.
Winter 2015-16 was most curious. We only needed plowing five times the entire winter and snow was pretty much gone most of the winter. So it should follow that everything gets an early start in the spring... but thanks to a late snow which collapsed a good portion of my daffodil blooms who were unlucky enough to have sent up their buds already, and stubbornly cold nighttime temperatures, plants were a bit confused in April. My nature to look on the bright side came up with the plan to cut any of the blossoms which had laid over and bring them in the Lodge, something I don't often allow myself the pleasure of since I just love seeing all the daffodils in the garden. I love the light this time of year! The bare branches of the hydrangeas and the spirea just glow in the late afternoon sun. The birch beams against the blue sky and the dark branches of the background trees.
