Flowers!

Our weather this week here in beautiful Hartwood, Virginia, has been absolutely perfect!  Sunny, breezy, warm-but-not-too-warm.  Forsythia and Daffodils are in full bloom.

The photo is a clump of heritage double daffodils in our front garden, glowing in the sunshine and waving in the breeze.  It does my soul good to have flowers in the yard, after such a long, cold, snowy winter.

I have been working to whip my English Garden into shape ... two days at it so far, and at least two more left to go.  Weeding, pruning, mulching.  Used up the first truckload of mulch, and I have a refill ready to go when I get back to it tomorrow morning.

I am tired, but it's a good type of tired ... the kind that comes from hard work doing something that I love to do.

Early Spring Flowers at Hollywood Cemetery

Tuesday was a beautiful day ... perfect for spending the afternoon continuing to inventory and assess the roses at Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond.  I was working alone this time.  The solitude felt good.  With my map, notebook, and camera in hand, I was able to visit 25 more roses ... bringing the current total that I have examined to 89 ... with 39-or-so on the list left to go.

The cemetery, being 65 miles south of me and on a south-facing riverfront location, has a bloom schedule that is WEEKS ahead of my own garden.  Visiting there is boarding a science fiction time machine and going forward in time ... with plants far ahead of what I have here at home.

My daffodils are still short, with buds showing (but tightly closed)  The ones at the cemetery are blooming gloriously.

 

 

 

 

I had never seen this large patch of Snowbells before.  (I'm generally at the cemetery later in the year, when the roses are flowering.)

 

 

 

Speaking of roses, this grave had a beautiful Lenten Rose (aka, Hellebore).  I had to lay in the grass to get this photo, because the flowers nod toward the ground.

 

 

 

It will be two more months until the roses at the cemetery begin to bloom.  In the meantime, I love looking at the more permanent types of roses there ... the ones that are carved in stone.

 

 

 

It looks like I will only have to make one more trip to the cemetery to complete the inventory portion of my rose renovation and preservation plan.  Expect to find me there on the very next warm day, working furiously to finish the evaluation so I can put together the plan for our work day.

 

Speaking of the work day ... yesterday, I sent an email to everyone on my Hartwood Roses mailing list ... asking for volunteers for the Rose Work Day on March 23.  So far, 19 people have signed up!  I'm really excited to see this type of turn-out.  We can always use more, so speak up and sign up if you can.

 

Happy Friday!!

 

 

Sunny Flowers on a Cloudy Day

If the daffodils in our yard are any indication, spring is finally on its way! 

My color preferences in the garden change with the season.  I adore this color yellow in the early spring, but I can't tolerate it any other time of year.  This must be caused by some sort of innate reaction to the lack of sunshine from being cooped up all winter.

The only flowers that existed when we moved here were a row of daffodils planted along our front fence by the road.  Every year, I plant more around the property ... adding daffodil bulbs on our side of the front fence, in the Noisette border, with the azaleas by the driveway, and other places.  One can never have too many daffodils!

See the edge of the road in the background?

Last year, I took advantage of the fall clearance sale at Brent and Becky's Bulbs, and I came home with a wonderful assortment of daffodils.  Most of the ones I bought bloom after the plain yellow ones, so I can stretch the season a bit.

Critters won't eat daffodil bulbs or flowers, so I find ancient clumps of them at many of the abandoned old house sites I visit.  When these sites are threatened, I dig the bulbs up and relocate them to my yard and I share them with friends. 

My very favorite daffodil is one that the locals call 'Butter and Eggs'.  Scott Kunst at Old House Gardens says that these are actually 'Van Sion' (also known as 'Telamonius Plenus’) a double daffodil from 1620.  These multiply happily completely untended by humans.  They bloom a bit later than many other daffodils ... this one must be in a really warm spot in the garden because it's already starting to open.  (It's fragrant, too.) 

The other sunny yellow in the garden is the forsythia.  I don't have any of my own.  This one belongs to my neighbor, but it's planted adjacent to my rambler fence and I enjoy its sunny color.

Blooming forsythia means that it's pruning time around here!  I expect to get started on this in earnest next week.  Woo hoo, spring is here ... it's time for me to sharpen the pruners and gather a matching pair of gloves, because I have a lot of work to do.