Much to-do in the Garden

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: It's hard to believe, after the winter we've had, but I think spring has finally arrived here in New England. The dun brown lawn is starting to green up, and the narcissus are poking through the earth. We even have a few crocuses in one of the back beds. 

There are other plants emerging, which is where I run into my problem. Are they day lillys? Irises? Weeds? I don't know. The garden - and I use garden in the English sense here, because saying "property" sounds too grand - was my late husband's bailiwick. He spent hours out-of-doors every day during the summer, doing God-knows-what. (Some of it was definitely having a beer on the stone patio, which he laid.) My part was that of faithful handmaiden. I am good at pruning, weeding when the weeds are identified for me, raking and hauling a wheelbarrow around. The rest of what makes the perennial flowerbeds look good, and the blueberries, raspberries and grapes produce, is a mystery.

I have made up the following list of what I know needs to be done: 1) Pick up sticks. Between a succession of blizzards and several windstorms, the front and side yards are littered with everything from minuscule twigs to branches bigger around than my arm.2) Cut back the forsythia. We have quite a lot, and it's a yearly fight to keep it from overwhelming the side yard.

3) Lay down tarps over the Japanese Knotweed before it starts growing. We've been slooooly pushing this invasive plant back over the past several years, but like the forsythia, you need to keep on top of it. There are several spots where I can't tarp over; those I'll pull up by hand as they emerge. 4) Rake out the flowerbeds. I think? We have several circular beds in the back with a mix of spring bulbs, day lillys, nicotiana and wildflowers like Indian paint brush and Queen Anne's Lace. The latter dries and falls over during the winter, so now everything looks like it's covered with straw. I get rid of that, right?

5) Later in May, when the last frost has passed, I need to get annuals for the front porch flowerbed. No idea what's going to go in there. Should it be mostly one color? A mix? Tall to short from back to front? Clearly, I need something like a paint-by-numbers guide, except with plants instead of paints.

So Reds, how about you? How are you getting the garden ready for spring? Planning anything new this season? And what would you suggest I put on my to-do list for outdoors?

DEBORAH CROMBIE: It has been so cold here! I know you northerners are laughing at me, but normally we can put in tender plants by mid-March. Not this year! I finally planted my veggie buckets last Thursday, but am still having to cover them when it drops down into the 40s. And I have loads and loads of other stuff that has to be potted, impatiens and begonias and herbs, and a new David Austin rose--Gertrude Jekyll (a connection to the book-in-progress)-- that will have to go into the flowerbed. I'll have my yard guy help with that, but otherwise it's all me. Gardening in NOT Rick's thing...

Julia, are you doing veggies? I'm doing a garden in 5 gallon paint buckets. I got the idea from Lucy, actually from her tomatoes planted in buckets on her balcony in Key West. I have about 14 buckets with one plant each, on the south side of the house, but I can move them around if it actually gets too hot as the summer moves on. I'll let everyone know how it turns out.

JULIA: No veggies this year, Debs - I'm opting for a CSA share from my friends at Bumbleroot Farm. All the fresh taste, none of the weding.

INGRID THOFT: I live in a high rise in downtown Seattle and don’t have any personal outdoor space, which suits me just fine.  When we lived in Massachusetts, we had a yard and a pool, both of which required a lot of upkeep.  We enjoyed it at the time—I especially liked planting my containers each spring—but honestly?  We don’t miss the work.  I like to think of Pike Place Market as my garden:  The tulips arrived a few weeks ago.  The citrus is waning, and the mangoes are delicious.  The changing of seasons is evident by the bounties on display, and I don’t get dirt under my fingernails!

HALLIE EPHRON: Gardening gloves!

Everything here is sooo late. The forsythia has finally bloomed and the quince is about to burst. Our Japanese andromeda is lush. We're having our first 50+ degree day just about since the fall. And I have two cheery pots of pansies bobbing their heads on the patio. Thx, Home Depot.

We've had a profusion of wildlife. Tons of birds and squirrels. A magnificent red fox and a powerful coyote whom we'd like to introduce to a pair of bunny rabbits, but they keep missing each another. It's a good thing those bunnies are cute, because otherwise they'd be extinct.

And of course the ants are back. Inside.

RHYS BOWEN: Alas, we live on a steep hill, surrounded by deer and jack-rabbits, AND we are away in Europe for much of the summer. So gardening is restricted to pulling weeds, picking lemons at the right time of year and smelling the lavender and rosemary which are the only things the deer won't eat. We do, however, make up for it with a lovely view and I plant annuals in pots on my deck when I am home....and dream of an English cottage garden!

JENN McKINLAY: Gardening is AZ is pretty much done for the season. My peach and plum trees will come to fruition in late May/early June and then we just slog through the summer to get to the other side, watering our sunflower patch for the rogue lovebirds in our neighborhood to chow on in August. If I want pumpkins for Oct, I need to plant them in July. 

Anything else we want to plant has to be down in February for a May harvest. I haven't done that since the Hooligans were youngsters. They loved digging in the garden, playing (and naming) the earthworms and the lady bugs. Now we have desert landscaping in the front of the house with pungent creosote, sage, and rosemary bushes. And the backyard is mostly lawn for the dogs with fruit trees and some yellow bells and plumbago thrown in for color. I love to be outside and I have loads of container plants on the patio that keep me busy without having the huge garden we used to maintain. 

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: What a crazy year! This time last year, my tulips looked  like this. 

I know exactly when they bloom, because I always wind up at Malice when they are at peak. Not this year! Yikes!  They peeked up their first little shoots and zapped themselves right back underground. The crocuses  braved the cold and emerged, and flourished, but we re only just now getting the buds of daffodils and tulips. You can't even tell the colors yet. No lilacs, no forsythia, no magnolias.

I am girding for battle with the tulip-eating squirrels. I feel like Yosemite Sam, poised with a shotgun. We had them planted with chicken grit, something like that, that supposedly hurts the squirrels' paws when they try to dig up the bulbs. I put cayenne powder on the buds so it tastes terrible. and there's rat blood, too , that keeps them away.  Grrrr.

I dug up last years geraniums and put them in pots and kept them inside over the winter--they did fine, so we shall see when I can put them out.
And if I put out pots of pansies, they would instantly freeze to death.

JULIA: Rat's blood?!? I don't even want to know how you laid hold of that, Hank. How about you, dear readers? What are you doing for the onset of spring? Or, like Jenn, are you already done until fall? And what do you think I should be doing out there?

I had some lovely pictures of spring (including Hank's tulips!) but Blogger doesn't seem to like me today, and is not letting me post them. I'll try again later!