Spring cleaning

The Kansas City area just experienced it's first weekend of 50/60-degree weather making it a great time to reconnect with the neighbors and with the garden. I spent all weekend outside and was surprised to find tons of bulbs under the leaf-covered gardens around my new home. It was also a good time to cut back a few small low-hanging branches that have been shading and impeding air-flow around the edges of the property.

My first task was tackling the low-hanging branches. On my property's perimeter are several pine trees of a very pretty variety with short needles and a top that weeps. Near the house on the west side of the yard are 4 of them. The needles on most are sparse and one of them is nearly dead.  I think they struggle beneath the hickory and oak trees behind them whose branches intertwine with the pines' branches. One was also nearly encased by an euonymus. That's the nearly dead one. They are free now after a couple of hours of sawing and clipping. I'll keep my eye on them this summer hoping for signs of recovery. There are a few on my property that are healthy. They're beautiful. So I'll keep my fingers crossed that I can keep them all.

Yesterday I tackled the island garden in the backyard. Here's how it looked when we moved in. I left the purple coneflower stalks standing over the winter, because I wanted to watch the birds eating the seeds. I wasn't disappointed. This garden is right outside my kitchen window. It was very smartly placed by Bob and Judy, the previous owners. You can see, though, that it hasn't been tended for a while and has become overgrown with coneflowers, walnut seedlings, and grass. Last fall I found that there are spring bulbs planted here, too.

As I cleared out the coneflower stalks it was difficult to avoid stepping on all the new green leaves sprouting from the bulbs. They are everywhere. It took nearly the entire day, but I got the space cleared - roughly. It still needs mulch, but it is a joy to see the promise of flowers to come.  Look at all these daffodils! But that isn't all. There are clumps of tulips scattered about this garden as well as a group of irises in the center. It'll be fun to find out what I have in my new garden. And I won't have long to wait for the daffodils :-)

Well here's what I have now that I've discarded the coneflower stalks. I left enough leaves to protect the plants from what will certainly be more cold weather. The leaves will soon be replaced with mulch making the garden look much neater. Last fall I pulled up some of the coneflowers on the east edge of this garden to plant several herbs and flowers from my old garden. There are two large clumps of thyme, a lovely blue-green lavendar plant, a yarrow with a terra-cotta flower, some moonbeam coreopsis, oregano, two large purple-flowered East Friesland sage, Russian sage, and a couple of others. They all seem to have survived the winter under the leaves and old coneflowers. Yeah!

The long-awaited spring arrived just a couple of weeks early. It may stay only a few days, but I was glad to see it and my neighbors. I know it's just the beginning and the cold is bound to return at least once, but what a great feeling. The birds were boisterous, the bugs were moving, and I'm was working in the yard. It was a tantalizing taste of heaven for this garden girl. Happy digging for all :-)