It's All Too Early

A warm winter and hot March brought too many things into leaf and into bloom way too soon this season. 

🚰 I had to have the irrigation turned on already, on April 24 -- three weeks earlier than normal.

It's still April! Orange geums have been flowering for weeks, the Biokovo geraniums have started to open, the Jupiter's Beard too, and even the tiny armeria -- sea thrift -- is blooming.

The Atlas daisy is too. And the linum flax plants have tiny blue flowers.

But everything looks so sparse and stunted. While March was hot and woke my garden up too soon, April has been cool and windy. Nights are still in the high 30s and low 40s. The plants woke up, but they aren't happy now.

The Virginia creeper vine normally leafs out on May 1, like clockwork. This year it came out too soon and the one night we had a freeze earlier it really zapped the vine. It will recover of course, but right now it is also sparse looking.

I was happy to see my transplanted serviceberry made it. It is opening its leaves slowly. It did not flower, but in future years when it has settled into its new spot, it will.

The transplanted Jackmanii clematis, which I moved next to the rain barrel, did not make it, but I will buy another later in the year when I can get out to plant. 

And the Chocolate Chip ajugas absolutely have to go. I will take them all out when I can get out there. 

They are once again a flat brown mass -- they recovered a bit last year after looking so bad, but not much. 

They had looked great for the first years, flowering well and greening up nicely from 2019 to 2023, but then not so much. The past two years they've looked awful.

Something low-care has to go in this empty spot and there is irrigation. Maybe a sedum ground cover, like 'Angelina'. That should spread out and cover the ground with bright color.

The dark red blob is a small gaura and dark leaved penstemons to the right will contrast nicely with Angelina sedum.

I can't really get out into the back yard or in front to check on things or take photos, but here's one more look at the newly opened up walkway with the rosemary removed. 

I like how cohesive it looks leading to the door, and it's now easy to round the corner on the flagstone path.

Such a strange season, with things out too early in March, but now cool and windy and dry in April, and me unable to do anything outside for weeks yet.

Rosemary Removal

It's gone. The lovely 'Arp' rosemary was taken out.

It was a deep green shrub with a dense presence that was nice. I was sorry to see it go. But it was simply too big for the space and it was hard to get by it. Pruning it was increasingly creating an awkward shape.

I like the scent of rosemary, but brushing by it, which you couldn't avoid when walking around the corner, left an intense smell on clothes and skin. Too strong. 

It was blooming in April just before it was removed. The bees loved it. But.

The look down the walk is open now, drawing the eye all the way to the bright blue door, or all the way to the deck from the other direction.

I do want to move the narrow plant stand table from the kitchen door to the open spot and store the hoses on it. Maybe plant something low and small under the table.

The square table by the garage door with the collection of pots now provides the visual weight the rosemary had provided before. 

Update for the Season

My extensive planting plans and redesigns for this season got canceled as soon as I realized I'd be non weight bearing for 8 weeks, likely 12. That takes me through May, and I had hoped to be back in the garden sometime later in that month, graduating from partial weight to full weight and I thought that meant walking normally by Memorial Day.

In time to salvage planting some things, shopping for a few additions and potting up things for a normal summer.

But that is not realistic. 

Even with my good prognosis (x-ray evidence of bone healing, no surgery, fractures are aligned and stable) the entire month of May and into early June will be non weight bearing. The more delicate part of my recovery as I slowly . . .  slowly and gently over 4 weeks . . . start to put weight on that foot will be the full month of June.

May is not a return to normalcy. June is not either -- that will be the month I practice being upright and mobile. At times. Still with a boot, indoors, only a little upright and barely mobile only for short times.

Nothing outside will be doable in June, not kneeling to plant, not getting up. Not carrying buckets or shopping for pots of plants. Or walking around on uneven ground. Although I may be able to toddle out with a boot and crutch and trim the Virginia creeper or pull a weed or two.

It will be July before a return to any activities in the garden. Mid summer. I can still plant then I think.

That's the update for the lost season of my garden.

More A.I.

While I have been laid up on the couch, I have been doing a lot of experimenting with A.I., both for long iterative conversations about various topics, research on my injury, a lot of Spanish practice and I've also been fiddling around with images and creating artificial landscapes.

Here, for example is my yard, more or less, with the crabapple grown mature and plantings under it filled out. It's clearly fake, and "off", but it gives me a feel for how it will look in a few years.

The big Chinese privet is missing on the right side, but still. . .

And here is a faux vignette of red chairs on a deck with a flagstone walkway leading to it, compared to my own arrangement. Similar, but a different layout of stonework compared, side by side, to mine. It's really instructive on how my space could look.

Similar look, same elements on the left as my real garden on the right

Here's another side by side comparison I did looking the opposite way from the view above. Again, I made the flagstone path wander through the center of the yard leading from garage door to the deck, compared to my own walkway and garden and stone patio.

An example of how my narrow yard could have been configured

I really like this and wish our hardscape could accommodate gardens on either side of a central path. 

Here's another I created to show the central flagstone path and gardens on either side, leading to a deck, with the house on one side. It has a waterfall and pond, though, which is nice, but I wouldn't want that.

Another example of how the back yard could have looked

I got creative one night and had A.I fill out the tiny yard at Greg's house -- it's the other side of his duplex, and is currently rented out. The "before" photos of the empty yard are from the real estate listing for the rental. I just asked Gemini to make a garden out of the bare space in the photo, and I tweaked it a bit from there.

Greg's neighbor's yard, currently bare but with potential

A little "before" and "after" fun. I did a view looking the other way toward the garage too.

Looking the other way

All these A.I generated shots look fake, and they have plants flowering way too profusely at the same time that wouldn't in real life. Some details are either too perfect or slightly distorted. Gemini has a hard time deciding if a tree trunk is behind or in front of a fence.

But for getting a feel for what a landscape might look like it's a real help in visualizing design changes. And I am having fun creating and recreating whole scenes.

Another Trim

I managed to trim off a couple low branches of the Sugar Tyme crabapple this winter. Now there is one more branch needing removal.

It's easier to see with the background removed.

I'll leave it for this season, and take it off next winter. This small tree needs all the greenery it has to keep growing. Although the odd weather this spring kept it from blooming (the leaves all came out too soon), it is really shooting up.

I just need to prune it well while still young to keep it more upright shaped and to clear space under the branches to walk below it.

Easter Sunday

Jim put the hummingbird feeders up today.

There is finally a leader growing on the little redbud. It struggled the first years and the top kept dying back in winter, but this spring it looks pretty great.

The viburnum has grown so tall. It gets irrigation and I was hose watering it last year too. A lot of top growth that is a little unruly. Not sure how to prune it for better shape, though.

The view toward the deck -- the aspens are barely leafing out this early, but the shaggy little crabapple is full and green already. The rosemary will be removed the middle of the month, Jeronimo is scheduled to come on the 24th (and start up the irrigation too, which is really early).

Happy Easter.

It's All Sparkly Now

After a snowless winter and rainless March, we got a quarter inch of rain on April first. Not much, but it was a gentle rain that lasted most of the day and soaked things. Today, nippy and clear, everything sparkles.

How I want to get out there and trim things and arrange stuff and pot up the Radio Red salvias . . . and

    . . . I can't.

The bush clematis started growing up through the mesh of the table. Maybe that would work to keep the stems up off the ground? 

Jim managed to get out on the step to pull the big stems back with a bungee cord. It wasn't easy for him, his stability while twisting or moving without support is poor. But he did it.

The stems are stiffly tied, but the plant is so rampant it may flop over anyway, or at least fill out and arch over, and some stems may still grow up through the table. Or it may all collapse.

Irises are well on their way now, both the white ones and the peach colored ones I got from Andrea.

The rosemary is blooming, although not much yet, and it is slated for removal when I can get Jeronimo here. It really has gotten to be an awkward shape and hard to pass by on the walkway.

As always, rain makes the garden look clean and fresh, and sunshine enhances it. The patio cushions are soaked, so I can't sit out there to enjoy any of it. And it's too chilly anyway.

Which is just as well -- I can't do a thing out there on my scooter and it drives me crazy.

It's Still Only March

Well, it's the last day, anyway. April starts tomorrow. 

It's still March today and with the sustained record breaking warmth there has been way too early growth. I haven't been outside at all -- it's hard to navigate on the knee scooter and I've only been out to the patio and to the driveway to maneuver into the car for appointments.

But I can see the redbud is in full bloom, and the viburnum too, although the viburnum and the crabapple both leafed out well before any flowers, so the effects are odd. 

When I did finally roll out the kitchen door today to look at the pots by the table I was amazed. 

The bush clematis has exploded.

I want to tie the floppy canes to the shepherd's crook pole to keep it from dragging its pretty flowers on the ground, but I can't get to my bench where the orchid clips or ties are.

I can't even get the scooter up on the raised stone by the door to tie anything.

All of April I will still be on the scooter, and . . . 

     . . . I need to let things go. All of it.

I need to look away. The plants will do what they do. I'll fix things later, in late May or June.

I want to divide the Black Adder agastche -- it's coming in now in its pot. But that will have to wait. 

The Radio Red salvias, still in their black plastic nursery pots, need trimming and re-potting. That will have to wait too. 

The sedum in the terra cotta pot is filling out. That was supposed to be divided and planted out along the moss rock border. That won't be done.

This is the hardest part -- the small jobs that need doing, the minor adjustments, not the canceling of my big planting plans and new installations. 

All I can tend to now is watering, and after dry and warm conditions all of March, there is a bit of rain (maybe a quarter inch) forecast for tomorrow. Jim has hooked up the hoses and has been watering, but it's not much, it's not everything, and the oaks in the field aren't getting anything.

I need to look away and just let things be. Let them be. I have over a month to go before I can tend to what needs doing. I can start weight bearing in May, and by late May and June I can get out there to fix things.

It's still only March.