After an unusually warm March and cool April here in southeastern Pennsylvania, things are pretty much back to normal as far as bloom times. And per the usual spring palette, there’s a whole lot of pink, blue, yellow, and white going on. They’re not my favorite colors, especially on sunny days, but they’re rather nice on cloudy days (which we’ve been having a lot of), or early in the morning.
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Asclepias speciosa (showy milkweed) |
Ready for another ramble through the wonderful world of botanical nomenclature? This time, let’s look at names that relate to…well, let’s call them value judgments – not specific traits like leaf shape, flower color, or geographic origin, but more subjective descriptors, along the lines of of really pretty, desperately dull, and utterly ordinary. (more…)
I was going to subtitle this post “we now return you to your regularly scheduled spring,” since, after March’s May/June-like warmth, we’ve been plunged back into several weeks of frosts and freezes, drastically slowing the bloom season. So, things are emerging a bit closer to the time they normally would, though the trees are still about three weeks ahead of schedule. We usually don’t have lilacs in bloom by mid-April… (more…)
Though I start every new garden project with the same sense of enthusiasm, each one seems to end up with a different theme, depending on how it progresses. I still think of the big border out front as the “I’m Going to Die Border” (it was really hot the week I dug and planted it), and beds in The Shrubbery, which involved a whole lot of quality time with a manual sod cutter, as the “It Seemed Like a Good Idea at The Time Project.” This year, the mild weather allowed for an extra-early start on outdoor work, so I finally decided to tackle a project I’ve been putting off: removing the invasive vines and woody plants from the hedgerow out back. (more…)
Peak bloom season is still a long way away here at Hayefield, and at first glance, there’s not much going on.
