OK, well I’ve been a bit slow to get into the groove this spring, mostly because I’ve been working hard to finish my basement construction, and now I’m almost done. Carpet goes in this week, and I should now have much more time for gardening. What a relief! I’ve been working on that basement project for about 14 months, trying to do most of it myself.
I’m going to catch up on several weeks of photos in this post. I’ll start with our big April 15 snow storm — I took these shots the next morning. It was huge! Some areas near us got 13 inches, while we got around four on the ground. In some of those communities, a lot of tree branches broke from the weight of all the snow. You can see in the one photo below how my birch tree was arching heavily from the snow.
One bummer in my backyard: one of my last two alpine firs (sometimes called subalpine fir) is dying. There’s really nothing I can do to save it now, I think. Larry Sagers (who was my master gardener teacher) says it’s showing the stress of something done wrong last year. He said it’s likely that I didn’t give it enough water last year, since these trees live at high altitudes in moist conditions. It probably got too dry last fall, and that doomed it. I do recall reading the advice that evergreens should be well-watered in the fall before it freezes, and I really should have taken that advice. You can also see that it was misshapen, because deer ate all the lower branches when it was younger.
So, here’s something amazing — one week after that big snow storm, the tulip festival started at Thanksgiving Point. I’m a volunteer there now and then, working to get my 40 hours of service done to earn my master gardener title. On that first day, only 30% of the tulips were in bloom, but then our master gardener class went for a tour on Thursday the 24th, and it was more than 60% in bloom. Here are some photos from that day.
A few of those shots are from the “Secret Garden” at Thanksgiving Point, which is really cool. I like the brick walls with Boston ivy growing on them, the wooden gates/doors, the arches with honeysuckle and climbing roses growing over them, and the cool, old-fashioned flowering quince shrub (with the salmon-red blooms above). That shot with all the people is our master gardener class (or most of us), with Karen Ashton, the founder of Thanksgiving Point Gardens, providing the guided tour. Karen was part of our class last fall, and it was fun to hear her personal insights on the gardens and stories about how they were developed.
The tulip festival is over, but I’d bet if you go to the gardens this week, you’ll still see incredible flowerbeds, about 80% in bloom (it was 90% last Thursday). It’s worth it to go see!
Now, onto my garden and what’s blooming this week. My Granny Smith apple (below) is blooming very well this year. I also have a Jonathan apple and it’s a little slower but starting to bloom, too. You may recall that I had no blossoms on these last year. The advice from Larry Sagers was to pluck off about half of the blossoms now, so the tree doesn’t spend too much energy producing fruit and has enough energy to start producing the microscopic beginnings of next year’s flower buds. I’m supposed to do this blossom thinning for two years and then it should be back to normal. I need to get out and do that this week.
Here are a few more things in bloom right now.
Starting from the top left, those are:
1st row: close shot of Kwanzan Cherry tree blossoms (ornamental tree), Vinca minor groundcover, and blossoms forming on leatherleaf Viburnum.
2nd row: Candytuft (Iberis) groundcover, a close-ish shot of flowering cherry (or sand cherry) shrubs, and Rockcress or Arabis.
3rd row: close shot of Prairiefire Crabapple blossoms (just starting to open this week), some Iceland poppies, and some hyacinths (man, they smell great!) with tulips. I planted the hyacinths by my front walkway to give that pleasant aroma as you approach the house.
And now, one final photo. This is Brunera, or Siberian Bugloss (don’t ask about the name – I have no idea what “bugloss” is supposed to mean!). It’s also called false forget-me-not or perennial forget-me-not:
