Highlights of the garden in spring

I've been slacking on my blogging lately. Life has gotten in the way this year, with the loss of a dear friend, my mom's and husband's health issues, and new responsibilities at work. So instead of my usual habit of chronicling every little thing almost every week during the growing season, I'll post a spring highlight reel.

When we last left off, it was mid-April, and the daffodils were blooming. Next to bloom was the crabapple tree near our front door. I wish I'd noted the variety--it's gorgeous. These were taken on April 28.





Fast forward to May 8, and a bit more is stirring in the garden. Bog plants are coming back from their winter sleep:



Mixed border is greening up:





By May 15, a little more is happening:



And we have some flowers! The irises are blooming:









My favorite iris and the only one I know the name of: Batik.



And so are the daylilies:



There's even a little activity in what I pretentiously refer to as the potager (inside my head anyway. I'd get laughed out of my own house if I tried that out loud). The garlic I planted last November is doing well:


And the lovage, rhubarb, and walking onions are thriving:





In late winter/early spring, I cleared some weedy mess and expanded some beds:




In June, the soil starts warming up, and the garden transforms quickly.

By June 7, the mixed border is getting bushier:





And lots of stuff is blooming - like larkspur and snapdragons:


And Canterbury bells:



And delphiniums:




The pond plants are getting bigger - and we have a bench now:



Vegetable seedlings are transplanted into the "potager":



And this morning, as June comes to a close, everything including the weeds is growing, often an inch or more a day. I'll give today's pictures their own post, because just like the weeds, I can't restrain myself this time of year.

First garden pictures of spring

These pictures were taken just over a week ago, on April 14. I should have grabbed some new pics this weekend, because this time of year the garden changes amazingly quickly. That clematis that was 4 inches high on Wednesday is 8 inches high by Sunday. Buds open, blooms fade, perennials break ground, and the !@#$% grasshoppers hatch and start chomping. Yes, this has happened. We have tiny nymphs about 1/4 inch long. They're almost cute. They'll be a horrible garden-eating plague in less than a month. Ah, spring...

OK, back to the pictures, none of which contain grasshoppers (yet).

Look! Green! It's so exciting to trim away the brown, dead foliage and discover green treasures underneath.

Living in a place with a short growing season has made me appreciate anything that blooms early--like these daffodils and grape hyacinths.





We planted this apple tree our first spring in Flagstaff. I think it's a Fuji. This year it put on a lovely display. No clue if we'll actually get apples. As soon as it started blooming, we had a hard freeze (because of course we did), but it's still lovely.




We have crabapples too, which are a bit hardier in our less-than-optimal climate. Mine have survived on way too much neglect. This year I've resolved to actually water them regularly. Still, the blossoms are beautiful:


We even have a few (very few) edibles already, mostly chives and onions. Here are the walking onions that survived last year's horde of grasshoppers (grasshoppers seem to love anything in the onion family):


That scruffy thing to the left is a leek I planted last spring and forgot to harvest. Some garden handout I read when I moved here said that leeks are, "not adapted" for our climate and/or altitude. Good thing plants don't read garden literature.

I planted garlic last fall. We had a very warm fall, so it sprouted in about November. I worried that our cold winter temps would kill it, but nope. It's standing tall, at least till the grasshoppers show up.


And finally, there's the pond. All ten fish (6 goldfish, 4 koi) survived the winter - hooray! They've starting coming out of hibernation in the last couple of weeks and seem to be doing fine. I've had a heckuva time keeping debris out of the pond (gotta love windy spring days), but it's starting to look tolerable. The day I took these pictures, it was full of algae (blech), but here's a pic of an area onshore that's starting to look spring-y. Just ignore the nasty algae-covered water in the background. It looks better now.


Spring is springing!

Today's estate sale bargains

Daylily 'Custard Candy'. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

 If you know me at all or have read this blog much, you know I'm a bargain hunter (see my series of posts on frugal gardening for evidence). I find some of my best non-plant bargains at garage and estate sales--pots and other containers, garden tools, garden art, and other odds and ends that make this gardener's heart happy. Every now and then, I score plants that way too, usually pathetic-looking ones well on their way to that great garden in the sky. As you also know if you read this blog at all, winter is not my favorite time of year. I've probably spent about a third of my posts complaining about the cold, complaining about the snow, and complaining that I can't garden because of the cold or the snow. Time to add another complaint: there are almost no garage sales in Flagstaff in the winter. Today, though, it seemed like garage sale season might be starting. I found three--count 'em, three!--estate sales, and one had a big ol' pile of pots and other gardening paraphernalia. $10 later, my pickup bed was full. Among the various containers, bags of soil, moss, and other stuff, I found several boxes of bulbs and bare-root plants. I figured they were from last spring and probably DOA, but I took them, since they were part of my $10 pile.

When I got them home, I discovered that they are from 2016, or so the mailing label on the box said. So they're pretty much a lost cause, right? Might as well pitch them onto the compost heap and move on with my life, right? Sorry, but that makes too much sense. Instead, I spent the last hour planting every one of them that wasn't completely crispy. And it's raining, so I slogged around in the rain to do this. Yes, I am insane.

Here's the haul:

Daylilies

• Dragon's Eye
• Mildred Mitchell
• Custard Candy (the one pictured above)

Roselilies (Note: I'd never heard of roselilies before. Turns out they are double-flowered, pollen-free Oriental lilies, and they are gorgeous. See this article from Greenhouse Product News for more info.)

• Natalia
• Carolina
• Elena

Hardy gladiolus (I didn't know about these either. I've mostly avoided planting glads in Flagstaff, because I'd have to dig them up every winter, and our gale-force winds would blow them over five minutes after they started blooming. Hardy glads are shorter with smaller flowers (a better choice when you live in a wind tunnel) and are hardy to zone 5 with winter mulch. Missouri Botanical Garden has a page about them.)

• Nathalie
• Elvira
• Impressive
• Halley
• Atom
• Mirella

I'll report back in about June on whether any of these actually grew. Even if they don't, I got some exercise and discovered some bulbs I'd never heard of. Not too bad for a rainy winter day.

Winter finally put in an appearance

After being AWOL since last year, winter finally showed up in the form of a few inches of soft, powdery snow. The last morning in February was the kind of snowy morning I love: still, peaceful, not too cold, with snow falling softly and transforming the sad, scraggly winter garden into a wonderland. Too bad I had to go to work. I did take a few minutes to snap some pictures, since the way this year is going, this could be our only real snowfall. I'm glad I got those pics, because the snow was mostly gone by the time I got home that afternoon, the snow was mostly gone. Beauty is so often transitory, especially in a garden.

Near the front door:








Front side yard:











The pond! Part of my motivation for building a pond was the thought of seeing it surrounded by snow. And here it is:







Looking toward the potager:



This post is backdated, because as usual I didn't get around to posting the pictures in a timely manner. It's now March 9, the snow is gone, and the temp today is supposed to be pushing 60. What lovely gardening weather! Too bad I have to work.

Pond is for the birds

 Happy New Year! I've been traveling and lounging, because that's what one is supposed to do during the holidays, so I don't have any exciting gardening updates. What I do have are birds. Lots and lots of birds. This is our first winter with our pond, and apparently the feathered population of Flagstaff has decided it's a giant birdbath. We have flocks of birds hanging out in our front yard, and every morning, they're in the pond, bathing and drinking and being generally hilarious. We love the entertainment, though our driveway is now festooned with a fine glaze of bird droppings. Ah, well: everything has a downside.

Another downside: it's hard to get decent pictures of our feathered visitors, because as soon as they see me come out the front door, they scatter. So I've started taking pictures of them through one of our living room windows. The only problem is, our living room windows are dirty. I haven't cleaned them properly in well over a year, because I'm lazy. So my bird pictures aren't as sharp and clear as they could be if I put down the camera and cleaned the damn windows. Ah, well. No one ever said this blog was operated by National Geographic.





All of the pictures above were taken yesterday morning. This one was taken in early November. We came back from a walk to find a roadrunner drinking from the pond. An honest-to-goodness road runner. No sign of a coyote or any packages from Acme, thank goodness. He fled at sight of us, but we were able to get a couple of pics thanks to a good zoom lens.



So far we're loving the pond. It's a bit of work, but it's kind of fun to have the local avian spa. I hope the birds hang around for grasshopper season. I need all the help I can get with those things.