Ready .... Get Set .... SPRING!

Spring is my busiest season.  This is to be expected, since it's the time when I work to get my garden cleaned up from winter and prepared for its big 'show' in early summer.  Hollywood Cemetery is my other garden, and last Saturday's volunteer day was a big success.  The roses at Hollywood are definitely ready for their close up!

This is also the time when garden clubs want programs about roses ... did one last week, and I have another one to do in April.  These require at least a few hours of preparation.  I always spend an hour or two (or more) going over the PowerPoint portion of the talk, refining it and doing what I can to make it better.

In addition to garden things, I slave away at my sewing machine to stock the inventory of handmade collars for Greyhounds Rock.  Our first booth at an event will be during this coming weekend (March 28 and 29), at the Fredericksburg 'Rites of Spring' wine festival.

With all of this going on, it was particularly appropriate the other morning to see a sunbeam illuminating one of my favorite needlepoint pillows.

Believe it or not, this IS a more simplified life for me ... as I am working to strip down to pretty much only what I really WANT and NEED to do.  I'm not one to sit for very long ... you already know that I'm happiest when I'm active.  After being cooped up inside for most of the winter, it feels wonderful to be outside in the sunshine doing physical work.  This is a good thing, since there is a LOT of work around here to be done.

I have to try to remember ... 

One thing at a time.

Finish what I start.

It's a process ... directing my energy toward the completion of a project, instead of scattering my attention all over the place all the time.  I'm better at this than I was ... and I'm not as good at it as I will be in the future.  

Is It Spring Yet?

The calendar says that spring arrived last week, but the weather says otherwise.  Winter here was unseasonably cold and snowy.  It takes a close look to find any sign of spring in the garden.  

We can usually count on forsythia being in full bloom by now ... an unmistakable sign that it's time to put winter behind us and begin the spring pruning and clean up in the rose garden.  No forsythia flowers in sight yet.  The buds are there, but they barely show any color.

The roses are generally beginning to put on noticeable growth by now, as they prepare for their late May spring show.  This year, leaf buds are just barely beginning to break on some roses ... they are still tightly closed on others.

'Dr. E. M. Mills' rooted cutting from last year in a pot.

Rosa acicularis, brought home from our trip to Alaska two years ago.  I knew it would be okay in the cold.

Hellebores don't mind winter, no matter how cold and snowy it was.  They appear to be immune to whatever winter dishes out.  They bloom and spread and are a wonderful early season feature in the shady parts of my garden.

This little group of crocus is in the same bed as the Hellebores, but I didn't plant them.  I'm thinking that they were probably brought here and buried by squirrels, who stole them from one of our neighbors.

Finally, we have this single dandelion flower in the grass beside my greenhouse.  Weeds will always find a way.

As far as I can tell, the garden may be as much as a full two weeks behind where I expect it to be.  I am not at all disappointed by this ... it feels as if I have been given a bit of extra time to do what I can to put the roses and the rest of the garden into better shape this year.

According to the weather folks, winter isn't finished with us yet.  It's supposed to snow again tomorrow.

Today's Color is ... Red.

With everything popping in the garden right now, I bet ya thought I was going to say 'green'.

This is project #3 for C & C Photography's spring photography workshop.

I chose red for my subject, to show the wonderful variation in the colors of spring ... all you have to do is look carefully.

Enjoy!

As you can see, red and green aren't just for Christmas anymore.

All of this beautiful spring growth promises armloads of flowers in a few weeks. 

Be sure to visit C & C Photography to see which colors the other participants chose.  They're a very creative bunch, and I'm always in awe of what their work.

(written by Hartwood Roses.  Hartwood Roses blog)

Monday Musings ... on Tuesday.

Monday was one of those days where I felt overwhelmed by all the things I have to do.  The weight of it can get a bit stiffling, sometimes.  When I break it down and make a list, however, it's really not that bad.  In fact, I have accomplished quite a bit in a relatively short time.

Pruning is coming along pretty well.  The Hybrid Tea collection (80 roses) in the front yard is all finished.  This is their third year in the ground, so they got their first major spring pruning.  Until now, I had been less concerned with esthetics and more concerned with getting them established.  We'll see how it works out.

I took down the rebar tripods that held climbers along the Front Fence border.  It just didn't look right having pieces of rusty steel sticking up in a prominent spot in the front yard.  In its place, I strung three strands of wire along the fence for the roses.  It took a bit of a battle to prune them to shape (after letting them go vertical on the tripods) and get them against the fence and attached to the wire, but I'm really pleased with how they look now ... and they'll look even better next month.

This is Dr. W. Van Fleet, before his 'training'.

Here he is after ... trained to a fan shape, as horizontal as possible to encourage more flowers.

The pot ghetto survived winter pretty well.  There were only about half a dozen casualties among the 150+ roses banked along the fence.  Two of these are real disappointments.  I lost Elegance (a Brownell climber) and Emily Gray (a yellow rambler).  I expect that I'll have a bit of difficulty replacing these.

Voles killed Gertrude Jekyll.  They burrowed in through the drain holes in the bottom of the pot, and they ate every one of her roots.  If you've ever wondered what vole damage looks like, here's a rather extreme example.

It's pretty hard to imagine how many roses I have in pots, waiting for a spot in the garden.  To be honest, I don't have an exact number ... I know it's more than 200.  I haven't ordered any more roses for this year, so I hope to make some real progress on this.  I have such great plans.

I worked out the edging for the newest bed, on the south side of the house.  This spot needs some height, to mask where the old part of the house and the addition come together and to de-emphasize the garage door.  To do this, I'm going to send three yellow noisettes up the wall:  Reve d'Or, for sure, and probably Alister Stella Gray and Phil Edinger's Noisette ... maybe Marechal Niel.  Along with the roses, I'm planting peonies that we took from my husband's grandfather's house (and have moved with us from house to house ... 3 houses now), some rescued double daffodils, and probably some rescued iris.  This bed is bordered with Richmond cobblestones, which coordinate really nicely with our stone walls in front of the house.

The roses on the posts of the Arcade are all pruned and tied into place.  This is one of the few two-people jobs around here.  It takes one person (me) to prune the rose and gently wind it around the post, and another person (husband) to tie it in place with jute twine.  After only a year in the ground, Parade and Heidelberg have already almost reached the top of their posts!

This is a photo from last year, when the roses were smaller.

I have started pruning the roses in the Rose Field.  The climbers on the East Fence are all trimmed and reattached to their wires, and some of the ramblers on the North Fence are also finished.  Most of the old European roses (the Gallicas, Damasks, Hybrid Chinas, etc.) are done, too.  I pruned them down by 1/3 to 1/2, and I removed many of the suckers to control the size of their 'colonies'.  It should only take a few more days to have the rest of the shrubs in the Rose Field finished ... then I'll turn my attention to the climbers on the arches of the Rose Tunnel.

Mutabilis, before pruning. 

I was a bit distressed when I saw all this winter damage and dead canes.

Mutabilis, after pruning.

I cut out all the dead wood, and it looks much better than I thought it would. 

See the new basal canes?

The weeds are getting ahead of me.  Every year, I swear that I will finally win the battle ... and every year I fall behind as the weeds march across the rose beds.  They laugh at mulch and herbicide, and I struggle to keep up. 

I have to get serious about finishing my presentation for the Lynchburg Garden Symposium next month.  The outline is almost complete, so the rest of the program won't take any time at all.  The Lynchburg City Cemetery is such a special place, and I'm thrilled that they invited me to speak.

This time of year, it's easy to get dragged down by all the things I have to do.  I try to take time to reflect and appreciate what I have already done, and to be thankful that I have the ability to do it.

(written by Hartwood Roses.  Hartwood Roses blog)

Stocking Up on Supplies

It's time to start potting some of the baby roses into their big-boy pots, and I don't have any potting mix.  This means that it is time for my annual trip to Ebenezer Heights Greenhouses in Culpeper (Virginia) to fill the truck with bales of ProMix ... and to see what other wonderful things they have that I can't live without.

The nursery is on the grounds of a brick Colonial Revival house, around a hairpin turn and up a hill from downtown Culpeper. 

I love the little carriage house/garage/storage building.

It's still early in the season, so most of the greenhouses were filled with annuals and vegetables freshly potted out of plug trays ... too small for sale just yet.

I don't have time to plant or care for annuals, but I want some hanging baskets for my front porch.  How about pansies?

or geraniums.

The porch on our old house needs something traditional, so I decided to get two ferns ...

and two baskets of mixed foliage plants ...

I'll repot the mixed baskets into larger containers, and add a yellow calabracoa and a hot pink zonal geranium ... for some splashes of color.

(the geraniums I chose aren't blooming yet.)

I paid for my plants and Promix, loaded the Expedition, and headed for home.

Isn't this lovely?

With all of my new supplies, you can be sure that I will be doing a LOT of potting in the next few days. I am really excited to have my hands in dirt again!

(written by Hartwood Roses.  Hartwood Roses blog)