Today, I spent quite a few hours working in the garden, mostly in the front yard. I collected seeds from my Salvia nemerosa ‘East Friesland,’ white coneflower, lance-leaved coreopsis ‘Mayfield Giant,’ and a tall flower that’s either salvia transylvanica or nepeta transcaucasica. Can’t remember which, because I have planted both. Those are names from the Thompson and Morgan catalog, but I can’t find them in the Sunset Western Garden Book. I’m going to look up some info on those plants online right now and I’ll post a follow-up entry if I find different names for them.

I’m thinking what I collected was the salvia seeds, because I believe the nepeta has more fragrant foliage. In fact, there was a clump in the front yard of what I think was the nepeta, and after cutting it down, one of our cats came over and rolled all over it, sniffed it, and started sneezing. Just like catnip. The Nepeta family includes catnip; some varieties are called catmint. This one isn’t supposed to be incredibly attactive to cats, but it has some effect. Anyway, I’m pretty sure the seeds I collected were from the salvia — because they were taller and thicker stemmed than the stuff the cat was loving.

I was surprised how workable the ground was, because I did a little weeding and pulling out grass that was growing in flowerbeds. I guess we’ve been warm enough that the ground isn’t frozen, at least not at the surface, right now.

I did find some daffodil shoots coming up, but it seems there are fewer of them than last year. And some of the shoots are scrawny — I don’t think I fertilized them last year. I’ll have to remember to do that before the green parts die down this spring.

I cleared out all the stalks of the yarrows and even pulled some of the plants out by the roots. They are too aggressive, and they’re spreading out and outcompeting some other flowers. Speaking of aggressive, I also trimmed all the dead stalks out of the bed of Anthemis flowers along the south wall of the house. These flowers are becoming weeds and sending their seedlings all around the yard. I was surprised that a number of them had completely died this winter, though. The stalks just pulled out of the ground, with stumpy, dead roots. I wonder if the cutworms got to them last fall. I had a few problems with cutworms in the garden the year before. They really hammered the delphiniums I tried to grow.

My pile of dead weeds in the backyard is huge now. I need to burn it this spring when the time comes to get a burn permit. I’ve tried slowly throwing it away in the garbage can each week, but I can never get ahead of all the new stuff that goes into the pile.