Spring Days, Summer Flowers

I had roses in bloom this morning. Roses. It's not even June quite yet - this has to be the earliest I've had blooming roses in the 18 years we've been in residence. 'Burgundy Iceberg', 'Fragrant Memory' and 'Carding Mill' were open today. "Gertrude Jekyll' and 'Nancy Reagan' are not far behind. 'Peace', alas, has gone to its reward. There are only a few anemic leaves coming out, and those not more than a couple of inches high. My guess is that the voles in that area must have munched on the roots over the winter. Possibly over the last few winters - it's been struggling and declining for a while now. I know, I know - another one is easily come by, but this hurts. It was my late mother's favorite rose, and the first one I purchased for my home. Ah well......

What an extreme spring this has been here in western New York! Everything is pretty much 2 weeks ahead of normal. For instance, my delphiniums are probably a week or less from opening. Typically I don't see flower stalks until the second week in June. I wouldn't be surprised if local strawberries come into the market in the next 10 days (one hopes - yum!). Meanwhile, the iris and the peonies are emerging in all their glory. There's a farmer about 25 miles from here, down a country lane, who sells (and hybridizes) iris and peonies; a great lot of them. Looking at his fields this time of year is not unlike looking at a land-based rainbow. My gardens are graced with many purchases from Mr. Borglum. Every year I say I won't go out there this year. Then it becomes, "Well, I'll go but I won't buy anything". Once I get there, it all goes to hell in the proverbial handbasket and I arrive home with multiple bags of iris and peonies. Some of my favorite iris are simply admired for what they are; the cultivar name is long forgotten. There's a magnificent mahogany-colored one, about 3 feet high with huge, broad flowers. An equally huge, batik-style one in a rich shade of raspberry/grape. As for peonies, I have two beauties. 'Etched Salmon' looks like a David Austin English rose - bright strawberry pink with an almost imperceptible dark pink edging. The other is 'Nancy Nora', a blush-pink bomb type with the light, sweet fragrance I recall from a peony in my parents' yard. It's Borglum's fault. You go out to the beds, point out the clump you want, and he digs it up. If he gets some of the adjacent clump along with it, he'll toss it in. I ask you, how can you turn that down? Stop me before I spend again..........

And so it begins.......

This week has been a fabulous one. Our best friends arrived from Ohio last Saturday for their annual visit. We celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary in awesomely grand style on Monday, the rest of this week has been spent in pursuit of nothing but total fun and frolic, the weather has been superb - life just doesn't get any better than this.

It is, however, an unwritten rule that one does have to pay for one's pleasures. And so I will, beginning next week. We contracted to have our front step and sidewalk redone, and said area is just crammed with plants. Unless I wish to very cavalierly toss aside a wealth of bulbs, perennials, passalong plants and roses, I have to get my hindquarters out there and start digging. Pronto. When we signed the contract at the end of April, I asked the guy when he thought he'd be starting work. "Mid-May" was the reply. I blanched and promptly said, "NO" (that was "Hell, no" mentally). If he had selected just about any other point in the calendar year, I'd have been good with it. But with housecleaning, Mother's Day, our friends arriving for our milestone anniversary and mail-order plants multiplying on the patio, he picked the single worst time of the year, bar none. He agreed to push it off until June, but as that's only 2 weeks away, I guess that means I have kick into high gear, grab a shovel and a couple of long-suffering garden friends and have at it. Whether I'm still alive, and more to the point - whether I get done before he arrives - will be the subject of future posts. Stay tuned.......

Gone With The Wind. I'm Not Kidding.

What a day Saturday was! We had our Master Gardeners' annual plant sale in the morning, and were on pins and needles waiting to see what kind of weather would greet us. There was a high wind warning out, and the temperature was supposed to start dropping as rain moved in. Whew - we caught a break. The sun came out, and while the winds were gusty, there was no rain until mid-afternoon. But when the rain arrived, oh boy - we had sustained winds of about 40 mph, with many gusts of 50 and 60-plus mph! Today my back yard is littered with broken off lilac flowers, and tomorrow when the wind finally dies down, I'll have to go out and do a thorough clean-up. I'm ever so glad that we took down 7 silver maples a couple of years ago - this might have been the storm that sent them into the house. Still, it could be worse. I remember a Mother's Day several years ago when we had half a foot of snow on the ground. I feel for the planners of Rochester's Lilac Festival, set to begin next weekend. Between the abnormally hot weather we've had and yesterday's windstorm, I'm betting there won't be much to see in Highland Park this year...........

Weird Weather

Today was one of the strangest days in what's so far been a very strange spring season. I awakened about 5 this morning to the booming sound of high winds - a cold front was coming through. When I got up, it was gloomy and getting steadily darker. While eating my breakfast, I had the misfortune to glance out the window - it was snowing. Like blazes. It looked like the kind of wind-driven, blizzardy snow squalls we usually have here in December. It was a bizarre sight to look out at the crabapple in full bloom, at all the tulips, narcissus and violets and see something like that! We had squalls off and on all morning. I kept throwing middle fingers up into the air, but the cats were delighted. Snowflakes apparently ROCK, and my housework was accompanied by the sounds of the cats pounding on the sliding door, smacking at the flakes as they hit the patio. I'm glad someone was happy about it - it sure as hell wasn't me.........

For Love of Sweet Peas

I began spring planting today, and the first thing to go in was my beloved sweet peas - 10 varieties all told. I must have sweet peas, the more the better. On offer this season: 'Streamer Chocolate', 'King Size Navy Blue', 'Rhapsody in Blue', 'Horizon Mixed', 'Tall Mixed', 'Mollie Rilestone', 'Nellie Viner', 'Zinfandel', 'Blue Ripple' and my all-time favorite, 'April in Paris'. 'April' is without a doubt the most fragrant sweet pea I've ever known, and it's lovely to look at, too. A bicolor, it's vanilla cream with a lilac-colored edge. I won a blue ribbon in horticulture at a flower show a few years ago for this sweet pea. In fact, some of my garden club were so infatuated with it that we grew it for our club hort project last year.

My love of sweet peas led indirectly to an opportunity to have a brief conversation with the late illustrator Tasha Tudor. In the summer of 2002, I attended a "Day With Tasha Tudor" (or something like that) in Vermont, at the Adams Family Farm. The big event of the day was afternoon tea with Tasha herself. There was a reception line, and there she sat (she was beginning to be frail by then) with a huge bouquet of flawless white sweet peas. When my turn came, I admired her sweet peas and said that mine were just beginning to bloom at home. She smiled and said how much she loved the flower, and asked me how many varieties I planted. I don't often get worked up over the great and famous (unless they do something asinine, of course), but I have to say, that was a thrill for me. And all because of a love of sweet peas.......

The First Real Rainy Day of Spring

We've been a tad on the dry side the last couple of weeks in my region. The unbelievably hot weather over the weekend helped fuel the outbreak of a number of brush fires, and when it's been breezy, dust devils could be seen whirling across the road. So I was grateful for the promised rain that fell this morning. A pause this afternoon allowed me to go out and do a few necessary tasks, and now it's begun to rain again - this time with occasional rumbles and mutters of thunder; the first of the season. I used to be terrified of thunderstorms as a child, but not this kind - the deep, almost imperceptible drumroll that your ear picks up at intervals. A favorite children's book of mine, in describing a first spring thunderstorm, referred to the sound as "the good-natured roar of a well-fed lion". Well put. And a comforting, comfortable sound when you're indoors with a cup of tea.....

The Rites - and Wrongs - of Spring

The last part of last week was a headlong leap into summer here in western NY - both Friday and Saturday we reached a high of 86 degrees, which broke a record each day. As you might imagine, it kick-started everything into growth and/or bloom, and the yard is beginning to have spots of color everywhere. Most of the minor bulbs have come and gone; however, glory-of-the-snow and striped squills are flourishing. Now the hyacinths and daffodils are beginning to burst into glory, and the forsythia is opening as well. Seeing the landscape change day by day, running around outdoors pruning, cleaning and seeing who's coming on next are all cherished rites of early spring that are a tonic after a long, mean northern winter. Spring isn't all beer and skittles, however. Some things can be utterly and absolutely wrong - even when you're doing something that seems so right. Case in point - Friday night I yanked the cover off the gas grill in high anticipation of the season's first cookout, and got a nasty shock. Upon opening the lid, I was confronted with a mouse nest - no, wait: a mouse condominium - about the size of a 6" flowerpot! Mercifully, it was absent any tenants, but my word - I was not expecting that. After gingerly removing the offending object and doing some requisite cleaning, the cookout went off without a hitch. I did take the liberty of dumping the mouse exhaust that I found during cleaning onto the adjacent flowerbed; I figured, what the heck - manure is manure, big or little. It certainly can't hurt.......