WHILE A BALD EAGLE CIRCLED OVERHEAD one sunny day last week, this guy let me sit beside him on the still-cold grass and visit awhile. Say hello to a wood frog, one of the earliest species to be out and hopping about, and dressed in garden-appropriate terra cotta, no less. Sometimes I don’t know how I got from where I was to here, but am I ever thankful. Learn more about the wood frog, Rana sylvatica, and our impromptu chat:
hey, mr. bigstuff: a wood frog stops by
March 31, 2009 at 9:32 am
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my april garden chores
March 30, 2009 at 12:43 am
APRIL IS THE MONTH THAT UNHINGES me slightly, and then comes May, when I just come apart. That said, it’s also pure heaven, this thing called spring: the affirmation each day of possibility and potential coming true before your eyes, the magic. What died will make itself known this month…and what lived will scream for your attention, all at once. And not in harmony. (PS: The chores are being published early this month because you don’t think I’m going to tell you what to do on April Fool’s, do you? Too easy an out!) [read more…]
the sunniest of bulbs: eranthis hyemalis
March 29, 2009 at 10:41 am
I AM ALWAYS RELIEVED TO SEE THE WINTER ACONITE, Eranthis hyemalis, welcome the honeybees in early spring; happy for both of these harbingers to be with me once again. The sunny-yellow Eranthis flowers (like the gradually opening hellebores nearby, with their even-larger nectaries) are real bee magnets. This little bulb (it’s technically a tuber) can be “hard to establish” but is well worth coaxing into a state of cooperation, as I seem to have finally done in a widening self-sown drift. Read more about how in my post from one year ago this week, updated with new photos.
giant pussy willow: salix chaenomeloides
March 28, 2009 at 1:54 pm
THE GIANT OR JAPANESE PUSSY WILLOW is screaming for attention out by the road today. Not that it wants me to actually do anything; just to ooh and ahh at how flashy its catkins are, at nearly 2 inches long. I suppose that warrants a closer look, no? [read more…]
a favorite poem to mark passings in the garden
March 27, 2009 at 8:16 am
I DIDN’T PROPERLY MARK THE PASSING of the great gardener Geoffrey Charlesworth last spring (2008), who in the late 1980s wrote a book I particularly treasure called “The Opinionated Gardener” (no, not a biography of me; Charlesworth, to his great credit, was even more so, and vastly more expert). His garden was not so far away from where I live, and were he here to welcome spring this year, I suspect that he, too, would be hoping for the best while poking about in the dirt as he cleaned up the beds. In memory, then, of Geoffrey Charlesworth, and of all the garden’s great creatures who haven’t made it to the newest season, I share a poem of his: “Why Did My Plant Die?” [read more…]
doodle by andre: a snail’s space
March 26, 2009 at 12:05 am
APPARENTLY WE ARE IN A CONTEMPLATIVE MOOD this week, not raucous or irreverent or even downright wild. Yes, doodler Andre Jordan and I have moments of reflection, you know…it’s not just all go-go-go with us; sometimes it’s at a snail’s pace. (By the way, have you read Andre’s memoir yet?)
baby, take a look at me now: yellow clivia
March 25, 2009 at 8:00 am
NOT CONTENT WITH ITS FIRST CLOSEUP, the yellow Clivia offered this by week’s end last week, a full-on flowerhead of massive proportion. A great plant, as I have already mentioned.
slideshow: think fall (yes, fall), part 2
March 24, 2009 at 8:36 am
I REPEAT MYSELF A LOT, AND HERE I GO AGAIN: Think fall (yes, fall) in early spring, when the urge to shop for for trees and shrubs tugs insistently. Think fall, and think winter, too. The spring things will be obvious, screaming at you in all their glory when you pull into the nursery, or open that catalog. The fall and winter beauties will be politely quiet (and probably hidden behind some garage). Without them—without winterberry hollies and sumacs, crabapples and viburnums and…and…and—how are you going to make a garden that’s more than just a splash in the springtime pan? With these great woody plants, perhaps: [read more…]
and the winner is…helleborus niger (again)
March 23, 2009 at 6:30 pm
T HE FIRST RACE AT CUPCAKE DOWNS always has the same winner by a length: Helleborus niger, the Christmas rose, the first perennial to bloom, no matter what. This year is no exception (which is what “no matter what” means, perhaps you guessed) and here it is. Up and running, since March 20, as if to greet the spring personally and right on time.
