Shorts

It's time. The short pants come out of the closet today. The Boston ferns have arrived. Osteospermum are in bloom on the store front. Daffodils are popping all over the yard. Another "hyacinth" has bloomed even less spectacularly than the first. It's 59 degrees at 4:41am. After an incredibly long, cold, tedious winter for us, we're now trending about 4 degrees above normal. I will not complain.

In the basement, two of the Marseilles fig cuttings have roots.

Contemplating Purple, Pink, and White

There's the root mass of an ancient crape myrtle in the backyard. I cut it to the ground shortly after moving in. It blooms pink, the color of bubble gum. It's the starting point for the Crape Myrtle bed. Last year's growth is now about 6' tall. Powdery Mildew attacks it every summer. Now that the oak tree is down, the increased sunlight should help.



In this bed, I have echinacea, both purple and white, veronica, purple and white, Russian sage, and a packet of cosmos seeds that will be sown in late April, pink and white. Along the back edge of the perennial bed, there are altheas, or Rose of Sharon, moved here from the front of a house in Winston-Salem several years ago. They'll be used to form an edge along the top of the broken concrete retaining wall at the gully. They bloom purple and white.



To make way for these shrubs, which need more light than I have allowed them in the perennial bed, I need to move my Snowball viburnum. Maybe that will be done today. Maybe tomorrow. I'm still trying to find a suitable location.



It's sunny and 30 degrees. We might reach 60 today.

12:04pm - I've been to Carla's to unload the stone she purchased last night. It was on the back of the truck. Then I went to the store to pick up the stone she gave me from the leftovers. It was another $10 deal for some edgers that were used in the store last summer. They don't match the house exactly, but the red will be fine of what I intend to use them for this year. Tomorrow, she'll come over in the morning to help me set them where I want them.

I also moved the Rose of Sharon shrubs.



The snowball viburnum found a new home along the edge of the woods near where I hang my hammock in the spring. It'll do for now. I also moved two pyracantha to the impromptu path along the dead oak tree trunk. A few years, they should fill in and block the rotting carcass. I had already moved the vitex to behind the swing.

It's 48 degrees. The tomato seedlings are getting their first taste of the outdoors. I've got them in the driveway, shaded by the truck. There's a light breeze which should help harden them off a bit. They've gotten leggy in their enclosed containers. I'm hoping to pot up the four Marseilles fig cuttings today. Maybe after I get back from the mountain.

Weeding and such as...

It rained yesterday. My rain gauge cracked and split at some point over the last week, so I can't tell you how much we got. There's no water in the basement, so I'm assuming less than 1 inch. The ground in soggy wet this morning, so I've decided to spend some time weeding in the back meadow, trying to remove as much periwinkle as I can before the Robins force me to move elsewhere. I worked on a small portion while my second cup of coffee turned cold on the bumper of my truck. I'll get to the rest of it in good time. I've got lots of plans for the day.

I was up early, having gone to bed about 9pm. The trip and training session to Winston-Salem had worn me out. Lots of new ideas for the coming year in the Garden Center are still swarming through my head. I'll need to put them down on paper as soon as I'm back to work on Thursday. Yes, my vacation starts tomorrow, but with two large shrub orders scheduled to arrive the day after tomorrow, my own schedule was switched to facilitate putting the plants where they belong. At least the store will be ready for the weekend. I hope they have nice weather. I won't be here. More on that later.

Before heading outside this morning, I checked the 4 Marseilles fig cuttings in the cloner. I moved them all here rather than trying to root them in the orchid mix. I'm determined to have this fig in my yard by summer's end.



The Black Mission fig I showed yesterday, which may or may not be properly labeled, has grown even more roots in the last 24 hours.



Heading outside, the little bluestem grasses I transplanted into the meadow garden has new green growth.



So does the spirea in the shrub island. This one was transplanted last summer right after I built the bed. It needed more sunlight than it was getting in its other location. I hope it's covered with blooms this spring. I'd like to root more of these.



Ditch lilies by the mailbox are putting out lots of new growth too. We'll get another couple of hard freezes that will burn this foliage, but that's what happens every year. It didn't seem to affect them at all when it came time to bloom.



On the slope, about 2 dozen of the 200 daffodils I planted this winter have sprouted.



The red maples by the street are starting to bloom. All they needed was a little warmth. The flowers are tiny and red, mostly insignificant. You can only see them if you know what you're looking for.



By the garage door, at the top of the retaining wall, I've finally realized what these are. In the fall of 2008 I received some Carolina Cherry Laurel seeds from a City-Data user. She also sent some hardy palm seeds. I cannot remember, or find in any of my notes, the name of this palm. She told me it reseeds for her and she moves the babies around the yard. I'll transplant these to the perennial bed where I have other tropical-like foliage in another few weeks.



I pruned the fig I grew from cuttings this year. I stuck the branches where I want them to grow at the corner of the yard along the street. I did this with butterfly bush last year and had great results. I'm hoping the crape myrtles and this fig do the same. The crape myrtles I've done are Dynamite. It's a dark red mid summer bloomer. The cuttings inside in the orchid mix have leafed out, but no sign of roots yet. Patience, grasshopper.



And then, I pruned the double pink Althea I purchased last year for a song on clearance. The soil they were potted in was mostly bark and these were always wilted in the Garden Center. We marked them down. I bought the last one just as someone else came in looking for them. You snooze, you lose.



The limbs of the althea were also pushed into the soil around the Neighbor's Corner. I've already got seedlings of the purple and white single vartieties back there. Crape Myrtle seedlings, Ligustrums, Loropetalum, and lots of other huge shrubs are being forced to compete. The winners will shield the backyard from the prying eyes of neighbors. The losers will be removed at some future point.

It's still foggy. At 47 degrees, I'll be working sleeveless in a couple of hours. Tomorrow, more rain is in the forecast. I'm preparing to do some work inside. I'm just not sure what my focus will be on, yet. I'm guessing the kitchen.

More propagation.

I'm using a method I tried before to propagate figs again this year. I lost my cuttings to mold and rot in late winter last year. This time, I've cleaned the cuttings really well using anti-bacterial dish soap. I scrubbed them with a toothbrush, then dipped them in a 10% bleach solution. Once they had air dried, I wrapped the tops of the cuttings in damp newspaper, bagged them, and set them on one of the fluorescent lights downstairs. The hardest part is maintaining a constant temperature inside the bag. I still don't have that figured out. But I do have root initials.



Last night, I cleaned, washed, wrapped, and bagged 4 cuttings of a Marseilles fig. I'm still not sure if it's a white or black fig. I'm hoping it's the white one I tried last year. The cuttings are similar in texture and color. I guess I'll know next year when they fruit.

I've also been checking out methods of propagation that I've never tried before. I spent some time last night searching for methods of budding and grafting. I'd like to add a second variety of peaches to my Belle of Georgia tree. It's not quite time to do that, so I'm studying the methods. If anyone has any experience with budding or grafting, I'm all ears. If I'm successful with the peach tree, I plan to add another type of plums to my Morris. My sister has a tree that I can get the materials from. The cross pollination would result in more fruit. I might even try it with figs, since I know it's possible.

I can't do much about that today. Instead, I'm waiting for the mail. I should receive a new throttle part for my dad's old chainsaw. The push rod fell out of the assembly the last time I used it. Once it arrives, I'll head out to the gully and spend the day cutting firewood. If it doesn't come today, I'll work on the kitchen some more. It's 34 degrees and foggy. The weatherman promises sunshine by 9am. I think I am to be disappointed.