BS: The Late Winter Garden

Subject: RE: BS: The Late Winter Garden
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 03 Mar 04 - 09:00 PM

Bobert, the neighbor has a grinding wheel, so soon I'll take the blade off the mower and sharpen it over there. I bought several old tools from him in a garage sale last year. He couldn't figure out why I wanted them, but these are some gorgous old iron hand tools that will simply look nice hanging on the garage or a garden room wall. I have an old wheelbarrow I'm going to plant stuff in this year and leave artfully in a corner of the yard. It's so full of holes it will have great drainage!

Like you I have a couple of weed-whackers. One gas, one electric. The gas one I bought on sale, and because the yard is so big I figured I could reach the back part most easily with it. It was on a good close-out sale at Sears, but it turns out to be so powerful in the kickback and noise that it's it hard to use. It bounces away a lot when you get near anything. So I bought a nice little electric one that I use most of the time.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: The Late Winter Garden
From: Joybell
Date: 04 Mar 04 - 06:27 PM

Janie, Thank you so much. You're welcome any time. We'd love to have you visit.
(I'm writing this with a Magpie on my shoulder, shrieking in my ear, and a baby Brush-tail possum on my head.)

Bobert, our Swallows pretend to migrate too, like your Geese. I know they just hang out, for a few weeks, in the little town 15 kms. to our North, then they make a big show of flying back again. There's a bunch of them singing wildly in the Lilly Pilly tree. I didn't know that Swallows had little songs until we moved out here. Usually they just call "sip sip" to each other, but they also break into spirited songs as well. Joy

Subject: RE: BS: The Late Winter Garden
From: Bobert
Date: 04 Mar 04 - 07:32 PM

Janie:

I reckon that Magpie is some kinda parrot? What kind?

No as fir possums? I thought they was jus' fir eatin' until 'bout 5 years ago a couple of em showed up on my back dean at night to eat cat food. I called one of 'um Kibbles and the other one Bits... They was real tame. They was around fir two tears and then we had a bad ice storm and it collapsed a carport and trapped the poor little buggers in there and they went to that big Kibbles and Bits bowl in the sky....

SRS,

Good on you, gal... Purdy soon you'll be hangin' out yer shingle "We Fix Dead Mowers"...

BTW, me and the P-Vine is considerin' gettin' into landscape designin' to earn a few extra bucks. She is allready been hired at one of the Washington, DC areas most formost nurseries, Merrifield Gardens, to work part time this season... I like that 'cause it means cheap plants... Only thing better than cheap plants is free plants!

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: The Late Winter Garden
From: Peter Woodruff
Date: 04 Mar 04 - 10:34 PM

In answer to your question Silly River Sage et al. I MAKE SALSA!!!

Peter

Subject: RE: BS: The Late Winter Garden
From: Peter Woodruff
Date: 04 Mar 04 - 10:39 PM

Yes I do jar it, but I don't cook it. I figured it out. All I have to do is boil the jars and covers an put the salsa in it!

Peter

PS No botulism yet!

Subject: RE: BS: The Late Winter Garden
From: CarolC
Date: 04 Mar 04 - 11:06 PM

I was out in my new little patio area that JtS built for me this evening, playing my accordion under the (almost) full moon. The air was soft with a little moisture, the crickets were cirping, and the moon was shining through the leaves of the live oak trees. It was lovely. Then I got bit by two mosquitos ;-)

SRS, the plant that you know as 'creeping charley', I know mostly as 'gill over the ground' and 'ground ivy'. I actually kind of like it, but I tend to like weeds better than I like lawn.

Subject: RE: BS: The Late Winter Garden
From: CarolC
Date: 04 Mar 04 - 11:08 PM

*ahem*

The crickets were chirping

Subject: RE: BS: The Late Winter Garden
From: Bobert
Date: 04 Mar 04 - 11:12 PM

CarolC,

Oh, the sound of crickets..... Folks are tellin' us that we got the 17 year locusts comin'.... Oh, joy.......

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: The Late Winter Garden
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 04 Mar 04 - 11:40 PM

I like creeping charley also, and it doesn't really go away as much as lie flat below my mower blades. Right now it is blooming, and there are big patches of purple out in the yard. I don't have a mono-culture lawn ever. I do try to take out the thistles before they get so tough and monstrous that it takes a spade fork to dig them out and they leave behind a hole large enough to cause sprained ankles.

Crickets down here are not exactly a blessing. Where I grew up, in the Pacific Northwest, you heard but never saw them. Down here, you see them all over, and you hear them all night. Usually when one of the little bastards has made camp in a shoe in the closet and you can't find it because any time you turn on the light the little bugger shuts up again. I rely on the cats to ferret out most of them. I have few crickets now at this house because I have well-established tarantula colonies in the yard. They are marvelous! I also don't have any roaches. I have been checking the porch walls for the first sign of our little Mediterranean house geckos. I have lots of native snakes and lizards, big fat roly-poly toads, some lizard cousins to the horny toads of Texas fame, and a large number of birds that come through the brushy part of the yard. And then there are the water birds that hang out in our part of the creek. Coyotes come through, probably looking for the bunnies that live nearby. We have a red fox that yips up a storm across the road.

Ah, spring! I do love watching this parade come through the yard!

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: The Late Winter Garden
From: GUEST,MMario
Date: 05 Mar 04 - 08:01 AM

it looks like spring may finally be thinking of coming to northern climes - the snowdrops in the garden are not yet blooming - but they are UP and have buds.

Subject: RE: BS: The Late Winter Garden
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 05 Mar 04 - 11:25 AM

And I found the manual for my rotary lawn mower!

Subject: RE: BS: The Late Winter Garden
From: Janie
Date: 05 Mar 04 - 03:53 PM

Spring ain't even here yet, and I've got APHIDS on stuff already.

Daffs finally starting to bloom. This week have pricked out and tranplanted 3 flats of snapdragons into cell flats, started hardening off a bunch of stuff, direct seeded lettuce and mesclun mixes, put in onion sets, planted out sweetpea seedlings, and will start tomato, peppers, etc. indoors this weekend.

Crazy weather. Snow and winter last weekend. All this week in the 60's to upper 70's.

Almost time to change the name of this thread to "The Early Spring Garden" (or the late Fall garden--if you are Joybell)

No lawn mowing yet for me.

Janie

Subject: RE: BS: The Late Winter Garden
From: Tinker
Date: 05 Mar 04 - 04:15 PM

Ah but Janie, I'm still in late winter, I'm still cleaning up what I skipped in the fall ( 17 bags so far and a new heap to compost... The daffodils are perhaps three inches high and a few small red peony shoots have found their way, but it's still very early. Last week we hovered in the 60's but we're back to normal in the high 40's again. I've got about a month to go to get where you are...

Subject: RE: BS: The Late Winter Garden
From: Joybell
Date: 05 Mar 04 - 06:46 PM

I love this thread. Visiting with friends all over the world, meeting Stilly River's critters and hearing the Coyotes' songs. I remember them from a trip to my True-love's country. I look up at the (almost)full moon and think about Carol playing her accordion and looking up at it too (when it moves on to the other side of the world). Our heat wave - it's been over 100 degrees for weeks on end - is over at last and it's raining. It will never get as cold as it is for Tinker though. Bobert you have great possums, I've seen pictures of them. They are quite different from ours. Smarter, I think but not as cute looking. Ours have flat faces and big soft eyes.
Thank you again Janie, for starting all this.

Subject: RE: BS: The Spring Peeps Out Garden
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 05 Mar 04 - 06:46 PM

Tinker, you read my mind. I didn't take up the leaves either, and while they protected stuff over the winter, I have to go rake them up tomorrow. They're smothering some of the stuff that is trying to come through.

I found a grape hyacinth in bloom! And two daffodils are bulging, ready to bloom this week! Lots of little blue hyacinth buds around the yard. I'll carefully move the red oak leaves away from them.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: The Late Winter Garden
From: Janie
Date: 05 Mar 04 - 07:21 PM

Tink--nothin' to do but move down here (and help me in my garden:)!

I need a garden grunt desparately. The trouble is, free labor is hard to find these days. This is the time of year when I start saying to myself "What in the world was I thinking of when I put in all these beds?" For the next 6 weeks I will be constantly frantic "Ohmygosh gotta get that chickweed and those cranesbills outathere before they go to seedwhenwillIever have a weekend to haul mulch and compostcan't believe I have to go to work todaywhenitisperfect to divide those phloxifIdon'tgetthelettucewatereditwilldie--------deep breath---------OK, I know I have responsibilities to house, home, and familybutcan'ttheyjustleavemetogardenallweekendandforgetlacrossepracticeandbillpaying and Hey Dear, don't worry about all the doghair on the carpet, I'll vacuum in 6 weeks or so (If he wants it done he can do it himself muttermutter) and then suddenly----The old garden roses are in full glory with the peonies going to town in front of them and friends who are just as frantic come by to stroll through my gardens and renew themselves, and every night something from the garden is on the dinner plates. Beautiflly happy accidents of self-sown combinations manifest and the big flowers manage to cover-up where bermuda grass has invaded so I can pretend it isn't there.

THEN I remember what it was I was thinking when I put in all of those beds. I smell the good dirt and move aside the worms so they don't get sliced. The hummers show up and the baby rabbits hide under the echinacea. A three year old on a walk with her Dad stops and plucks a viola to her Dad's chagrin and my delight.

I just flashed on the thread on faith, to which I haven't posted because I just can't put it into words. But in essence, that is what gardening is. An act of faith and hope and the fulfillment of promise. Even in the bad years, I always know another good year will come along.

Janie

Subject: RE: BS: The Late Winter Garden
From: Janie
Date: 05 Mar 04 - 08:43 PM

Raising our voices in song is also such an act of faith.

Janie

Subject: RE: BS: The Late Winter Garden
From: Allan C.
Date: 06 Mar 04 - 12:57 AM

One of the best sermons I ever heard discussed the wonder of gardening. To the best of my recollection the preacher said something like:

God has tucked millions of beautiful miracles right down there into the ground – more miracles than we could ever imagine! Those miracles of beauty are justa settin' there, waitin' to burst out into the world. And in His wisdom He has given unto us the keys to use to unlock these miracles from where they're a-settin'. Oh, yeah! He gave 'em to us. Those keys are ours to use. They are gifts from our glorious God!

Now, here's the best part. Alls you gotta do is to push those keys into the ground and wait. Just wait and have faith. And after you've waited just 'bout as long as you can stand it, POP! Out comes a watermelon. Or maybe you used at different kind of seed. In that case, POP! Out comes a geranium or a rose bush or some pole beans. They are miracles! Ever' one of them is a miracle!

Subject: RE: BS: The Late Winter Garden
From: CarolC
Date: 17 Mar 04 - 01:39 AM

We finally have everything we need for growing some fresh veggies using containers. We bought some fairly deep rectangular storage bins to use as planters. They were a lot less expensive than pots, and they'll hold a lot more soil. We made some holes in the bottoms for drainage.

The seeds and plants are all here. We got some organic humus and manure, some organic mushroom compost soil amendment stuff (the store guy recommended it), and a whole lot of good clean potting soil. We have some gravel for the bottoms of the bins, and some tomato cages for things to climb on (along with the lattice that makes the privacy fence for our little patio area).

We're going to try to grow strawberries, roma tomatoes, grape tomatoes, onions, two kinds of peppers, Italian runner beans, green beans, sugar snap peas, some herbs, several kinds of salad greens (we got window box shaped planters for the salad greens), spinach, kale, and cabbage. I think we're going to give the term, "intensive gardening" a new meaning.

The live oak trees are still shedding their old leaves from last year (and they're also blossoming at the same time). They've been shedding since last fall, and they still have quite a few old leaves that I know are going to fall in the next few weeks. SRS, you live in live oak country don't you? Do you know when they finally lose the last of their old leaves? I don't want to try to rake until most of them are down. Those little leaves are a lot of work to rake.

This is the best time of year in this part of the world, I think. The daytime temperatures are in the upper sixties to the low eighties, F, and the nighttime temps are ranging from the forties to the upper fifties, with low humidity. I've been wearing shorts and t-shirts all week.

Subject: RE: BS: The Late Winter Garden
From: Metchosin
Date: 17 Mar 04 - 05:51 AM

No shorts and t-shirts here yet, but my flowering cherry is in full bloom and the frogs!...not just the occasional peeper that's been around in the trees since the end of January, but great choruses of frogs have started booming from the ponds at night. Its not late winter on the Pacific west coast, it is definitely Spring.

Subject: RE: BS: The Late Winter Garden
From: Joybell
Date: 17 Mar 04 - 08:04 PM

Getting out the Winter woolies. It's still quite warm though. Magpies are gathering into Autumn bachelor flocks and larikinizing around the place. Our Spring babies hardly speak to us now. Soon they'll pretend not to know us when they're with their wild friends. We know that two of them are an item - Mrs Peepers and Archie. She is a bossy hen-pecking type and he is aloof with everyone except her. He fell in love with her when they were very small and he was an awkward, shy youngster with no tail. We rather suspect that she had something to do with his tail-less condition but were never actually able to pin anything on her.
Our other Magpies - Godzilla and Flattop were born late in the season and are smaller. We won't know their gender for a while yet but I think they are little girls. Archie may have himself a little harem. Joy

Subject: RE: BS: The Late Winter Garden
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 17 Mar 04 - 08:42 PM

Carol,

I'm still battling the drifts of leaves in my yard. Everything from live oak (so small they are impossible to rake or pick up) to large tangled red oak (they cling to everything you're trying to pick them out of). BTW: my daffodils are popping up all over, as are the grape hyachinths and some glads are preparing to launch blooms.

My approach to the leaves is to leave well enough alone (pun intended!) and let them act like mulch in the beds where I am going to add more anyway. I do have to pull some of the leaf litter out of the way so I can see the little stuff that is blooming or emerging. Those leaves have been carted to my compost. For the lawn, a couple of trips across with the mulching mower does a pretty good job on the rest of them. I expect leaves to keep drifting through here until early April, probably ending about when all of the oak tassles land in the street and yard and form pollen-laden drifts. We had a couple of little fires at the curb last year, where a thrown cigarette ignited them. Makes my eyes itch just to think about all of that pollen.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: The Late Winter Garden
From: Bobert
Date: 17 Mar 04 - 10:50 PM

Cold here in the panhandle of Wes Ginny.... Snow drops up. A few crokuses without bloom and that's it.....

Fast forward two weeks and things will be much different.

Got down the pre-emergent...

Soon as it warms up and dries up, I'll till the veggie garden an' get early stuff in.......

Maybe we need a spring garden thread?

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: The Late Winter Garden
From: Tinker
Date: 18 Mar 04 - 08:03 AM

We've had some snow everyday this week, mostly gentle flurries with little accumulation, but it's added up to six inches with a few more forcast over the next couple of days. the garden is once again sleeping under it's white blanket, and the promise of sprouting daffodils, wood hyacynth, tulips and squill is once again postponed at mother natures whim....I guess I don't get to move to the spring promises thread quite yet...

Subject: RE: BS: The Late Winter Garden
From: Roger the Skiffler
Date: 18 Mar 04 - 10:08 AM

Spring is sprung here. The bulbs & camellias & even early rhodos are out, I've cut the lawn (on high setting) twice already and the frogs in the pond...(well, you don't want to know what they are doing... but no goldfish, human finger or other frog is safe from what the people who write f**k would call g*ng b*nging).

RtS

Subject: RE: BS: The Late Winter Garden
From: open mike
Date: 04 Mar 05 - 06:59 PM

re-freshing this thread....thought there was another but could not find it under blooming, or yard...so here goes..

The daffodills are just about nodding out here...the quince contiues,
having been in color for weeks now. The Daphne is still odoriffic,
but is waning, and the Star magnolia is popping like pop corn, and
some white petals are fluttering down to the ground like snow flakes.
the Nectarine is a splash of magenta, and the narcissus are smelling great--inside and out. same with hyacinth (inside) and Cyclamen (in)
outsinde the primrose are showing cheery colors as are the calendula
and Million Bells and Osteopermum which are in protected containers near the house. A few white blossoms are on the fever few..tiny daisies..
but they stink! Some dainty pink blossoms are on the peaches and I
see clouds of white blooms on the fruit trees actross the way . The new growth on the Fotinia is blushing red and last but not least the yellow ones: Forsythia, and Carolina Jessamine (i think that is what it is called)
i have planted some snow peasa, and fava beans, and there is garlic,
and rhubarb popping up as well as weeds, weeds, weeds.

Oh yes and indoors ther is another wonderful plant blooming...
Clerodendrum, glory bower vine . White paery flowers like
Bouganvilla, with red centers.

what's blooming where you are??

Subject: RE: BS: The Late Winter Garden
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 05 Mar 05 - 11:00 AM

Down here in Fort Worth I've seen the forsythia blooming in the garden center (I haven't seen it in any yards) and there are a few magnolias popping out. The buds are getting fat on my Redbud, but nothing yet. My poor confused Japanese quince has had a very long lovely run. Usually they bloom for a week or two and then are finished. This little dear has bloomed since right after the new year (we had some very early very warm weather). Every time it cools off then warms the thing puts out a few more blossoms.

Lots of daffodils now in the front yard, and a few little bits of salvia greggi color. The cannas are popping up, but I'm going to dig and transplant one batch of them before they get going too much. Lovely greenery on a columbine out front, and it should bloom pretty soon. Lots of bloomin' weeds in the lawn (and I mowed them out front. A neighbor pointed out that because of the weeds my house looked like no one was home--may be the reason for our burglary two weeks ago).

Gotta go get a full can of gas for the mowing season ahead.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: The Late Winter Garden
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 05 Mar 05 - 08:57 PM

I was hoping this was about the theatre in Blackpool. Life is full of little disappointments as you get older.

Subject: RE: BS: The Late Winter Garden
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 05 Mar 05 - 09:39 PM

The first little blue grape hyacynth is blooming beside the back door this afternoon. No, no Winter Garden Theatre discussion here, sorry. But gardening is theater of sorts.

Subject: RE: BS: The Late Winter Garden
From: Bobert
Date: 05 Mar 05 - 10:13 PM

Still 5 inches of snow here in Wes Ginny.... But, it's supposed ti get up around 50 degrees by Tuesday 'er Wendsday....

Over 100 azalea cuttings are doing very nicely in the garage with a grow light over 'um...

Ohter than that, it's gardening magizines and ordering a few spring bulbs...

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: The Late Winter Garden
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 06 Mar 05 - 03:48 AM

I had an amble round my little patch last weekend... 10 different flowers in bloom still, although the periwinkle is looking a little worse for a bad frost we had. Judging by the state of my primroses, the slugs have woken up early.

Our blackbird seems to be scouting the garden again, her nest got 'removed' by a neighbour when she cut her pyrocantha down, so she's probably looking for another site nearby. The tits are bouncing around the trees like little clockwork toys, it seems I have both blue and coal varieties and they regularly beat up the pigeons who land on next door's privet bush to eat the berries. I've left them a fat ball and some seed balls to eat and they seem to be enjoying them. I've got two nests, one in a pitisporum tree, the other in the butterfly bush. The second is going to be a problem because I need to trim the bush down! Anyone know if it's safe to move the nest to another tree nearby?

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: The Late Winter Garden
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 06 Mar 05 - 11:46 PM

I mowed the whole yard this afternoon, front and back. It isn't mowing in the typical summertime sense. This is the first shot at lush water-filled tall weeds. I had to twice turn over the mower and scrape out all of the plastered on grass and weed paste before continuing.

I'm now going to take my allergy stuff and go to bed. It was a good workout and also a good shot of pollen and I'm tired.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: The Late Winter Garden
From: Boab
Date: 07 Mar 05 - 12:48 AM

The season of deer and cute little bunnies. Somebody tried to tell me that deer don't eat leeks; so I must have a malevolent gnome who takes evil glee in trimming leeks off at soil level. Tulips and day-lilies cropped to the roots. Now planning the annual chicken-wire fence corrals for green-planting, something bunny-rabbit-proof that will make one transplanting necessary instead of the inevitable three.
Every rose shrub growing inside a wire cage. Let nobody criticise wolves and cougars in my hearing------
   [No slugs! Thanks be for those wonderful snakes!]

Subject: RE: BS: The Late Winter Garden
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 07 Mar 05 - 03:13 AM

Boab, we could do you a deal with some foxes... I send you a couple of Reynards for your rabbits and you send me some Hissing Sids for my slugs?!

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: The Late Winter Garden
From: Janie
Date: 06 Feb 06 - 09:08 AM

The earliest of my daffodils are starting bloom, and the tiny purple reticulated iris. They are both 2 or 3 weeks early. On the other hand, something weird is going on with the camilia. It is usually starting to bloom by now, but the buds are just coloring up.

Janie