Spring Ahead

The scene exactly one year ago.  We
had run out of places to put snow.

What a difference a year makes.  In early March of 2015 we were desperately looking for places to put snow around our house and driveway.  Our roof groaned under more than three feet of solidly packed snow (our skylights would reap our failure to take action).  Meanwhile, alongside the Convention Center in South Boston, a snow mountain 70 feet tall had taken up residence. Its lease would not expire until the middle of July. 

This year the ground
is bare and we are
days away from
having crocuses.

On the last days of February 2016, Betty and I created a stupendous pile of broken pine and oak branches from the month’s twin storms – rain- and wind-driven rather than snow – while treading carefully to avoid sinking into mud on the paths around our home.  In picking one branch I uncovered the dark green of crocus foliage; with flowers to follow by mid-month.  Snow?   Yes, we remember it snowing this winter.  Vaguely. 

This El Niño winter is giving us a much-needed head start on completing the landscaping we began last summer.  Then, the later-than-expected completion of our home and unplanned requirement for replacing a quarry’s worth of loose rock with usable topsoil meant that, by the time we were ready to start landscaping, the “good” trees we wanted were out of stock.  Rather than put in second-choice saplings, we left empty spaces.

You can still see the carnage caused
by a mid-February storm.  This is
our neighbor's property.

Now the problem, naturally, is that the nurseries we favor won’t have in their stock of trees and shrubs until mid-March.  We have a shopping list.  (Boy, do we have a shopping list.)  Betty spent the winter reading up on recent introductions of native plant cultivars.  As a result, what was once a quest for the perfect forest pansy redbud (cercis canadensis) has broadened into wanting to inspect a gold-leafed variation on that hardy native tree before settling on the one that will occupy a place of honor in front of our house.  Multiply that example by four trees, 40 shrubs, and an army of perennials, and you get a sense of what is our future by way of choices – and work once the choices are made.

Our "lawn" is a parfait of
chopped leaves and mulch.

There is also a “small” question about what surrounds those trees and shrubs.  The default choice at most homes is, of course, a grass lawn.  We’re holding fast to our principled decision regarding a lawn-free property.  Last summer we spread a thick covering of bark mulch over our topsoil, with packed-soil pathways separating beds.  At the end of autumn, we begged fifty bags of leaves from our neighbors and mowed those leaves into a fine mulch.  This spring, we’ll rototill those two mulches into the top few inches of soil, then top that parfait with leaf mold.  This is what comes from adhering to principles.

But early spring is also for dreaming.  If you're reading this and you live in New England, your best way of kick-starting those dreams is to head for the Boston Flower & Garden Show.  If I’ve learned one thing over the years, it is that no two editions of the Flower Show are alike.  Each one brings new ideas, new gadgets, new things to gawk at.  You'll come away with some new vision of how to make your garden a more interesting place.

Oh, and if you're at the show on Friday, March 18th, I'll be speaking at 11:30 a.m. on the lecture stage with 'Gardening Will Kill You'.  Betty follows at 1:30 p.m. with her 'Dirt on Your Hands, Soil in Your Garden' talk.

After the Storm

Sometimes it takes a hurricane to focus a gardener’s attention.  Until Sandy’s arrival became a question of ‘when’ rather than ‘whether’, I had been following a diligent schedule regarding end-of-season garden clean-up:  I emptied pots or cut down perennials only when I couldn’t come up with an excuse not to do so.

Sandy pushed me into a very different and infinitely more productive gear.  The fence around our 1200-square-foot community vegetable garden plot came down in about three hours versus the full day I had previously thought it would take.  The final dozen containers were emptied of annuals, potting mix and filler in a single morning.  The hosta walk was cut down in an hour.  I was a veritable beehive of activity.

Keeping 'Big Red Judy' (all four feet
of her) allowed me to believe
that it was still summer in October

There is a word here that I have tried to avoid using, but which there is no way around.  The word is ‘procrastination’.  As people who know me will attest, I am not by nature someone who puts off things.  Yet, every October, I let drag an important task that needs to be done.  Why is the closing up of the garden so different?

I suspect the reason is that, through the garden, I can cling to the notion that winter isn’t really on our doorstep.  Yes, there was an overnight freeze in early October that turned unprotected annuals and vegetables to so much limp mush.  But in anticipation of that frost I began parking a number of containers into our garage on cool evenings, including one containing an enormous coleus called ‘Big Red Judy’.  The sight of a four-foot-high tropical plant along the driveway brightened my day, even as the perennials around it turned yellow and brown and the maples faded from their brilliant reds and oranges to muddy yellows.

One day before Sandy’s arrival, ‘Big Red Judy’ went ignominiously into the compost pile.  I did not even save a clipping.  By the time the winds picked up and the first rain bands arrived Sunday morning, the garden, like Big Red Judy, was no more.

Lots of oak leaves, but a new
perspective on what remains

This is written on Tuesday; quite literally the ‘morning after’.  From my office window I can survey the post-Sandy landscape.  The first things I notice is that a month’s worth of oak leaves fell in a day and now carpet the lawn and the maples and other deciduous trees have been stripped of the last of their leaves.  But the second thing I see is that our cersis canadensis – forest pansy redbud – not only still has leaves, but has turned a majestic gold.  The ornamental plum that I routinely ignore has a riot of leaves in the red-yellow spectrum, dancing not five feet from my window.  In short, what was lost in the storm has been gained in the emergence of individual specimen plants. 

We have also regained our view of the pond at least two weeks early.  We are less than 200 feet from its shore, but two-thirds of that distance is town conservation land and, for six months of the year, trees that we are not permitted to thin obscure our view of a picturesque body of water.  From now until the end of May, we’ll have a panoramic vista just outside the banks of windows on the back side of our home.

Hurricane Sandy did put an emphatic ‘period’ to the 2012 gardening season.  But it didn’t mean the end of autumn or of our enjoyment of the season. Autumn in New England is a wonderful time of year, as well as a great state of mind.  We ought to make it linger as long as possible.

The return of the pond view

The Rhythm of the Rain

Between three and four inches of rain have fallen on our garden in the past 24 hours, putting the first meaningful dent in a drought that stretches back through the Winter-That-Wasn’t.  Yesterday morning, we were ten inches below ‘normal’ precipitation since January 1; today we are six or seven inches down.  I might add that there is still light mist falling as this is written.

This is the best spring bloom ever
for our cersis canadensis

But the unnatural weather of the past month – 80-degree days in mid-March followed by a long stretch of cool, dry weather – produced a rare spring treat: a prolonged period in which daffodils co-existed with the blooming of our cersis canadensis (forest pansy redbud), and Virginia bluebells are in full show mode at the same time as epimediums.  The bergenia is glorious, and so is a bright pink azalea off on a corner of the garden.  A dogwood that customarily blooms in mid-May is already bursting, as are our lilacs.

Our Virginia bluebelles typically
appear in mid-April for a few weeks

As the rain tapers off, though, the suddenly waterlogged daffodils and hyacinths will keel over.  The petals from the ornamental plum will fall and form a blanket of pink around the base of the tree.  Those bulbs that lingered beyond their normal bloom time will be gone in a matter of days.

Jeffersonia diphylla (twinleaf) makes
a brief appearance, but has lingered
this year

It has been a beautiful spring thus far, though I know the stress placed on our shrubs and perennials will cause problems this summer (unless this weekend’s storm is a harbinger of a lot more of the same).  But we hooked up the rain barrels on Friday and so captured 150 gallons of rainwater plus filled two dozen two-and-three gallon jugs. 

This is epimedium suphureum.  The
flowers seldom last longer than a week

Our nearly snow-free winter is already having other repercussions.  Ticks made it through the winter unscathed and the tiny deer tick nymphs – which have the highest prevalence of Lyme and other disease infection – are several weeks early in making their appearance.  Deer, squirrels, moles, voles and rabbits also had an easy winter, which means extra applications of repellents.

This is not intended as a rant or complaint.  If you garden, you have to expect the unexpected.  The same quirk of weather that gave New England a spectacularly beautiful March and April is going to be responsible for a set of problems down the road.  If you’re an astute gardener, you alter your plans and make allowances.  It’s as simple (or complex) as that.