Spring

 

I love spring.*  I never used to but I think that may be because in areas where winters are gruesomely hard, like Maine, spring is kind of disgusting.  I keep remembering the smell of March in Maine and the way EVERYTHING needed cleaning, and that was even before it got covered in mud from the snowmelt.  It was great that the snow was melting (probably) but sometimes the results seemed like too much trouble.**  Some of you Midwesterners may agree/disagree.

We’ve had GENUINE SUNLIGHT the last few days.  And I’ve been getting out in the garden.

Garden.

Little tiny overpotted garden.  With verifiable sunlight on the back wall.

 

Corydalis

Way beyond cute.  We must have had it at the old house–it’s common, it grows well around here–but I don’t remember it, or anyway I’m not the one looked after where it grew.***  But my predecessor at the cottage grew a lot of it.  I was kind of a scourge to begin with because I didn’t recognise it when it wasn’t in flower, it was mostly growing in inconvenient places, and the foliage dies to nothing later in the season so I’d go to dig up a blank space and discover these tiny little bulby things that had the look of something that maybe ought to be rescued.  So eventually I started plonking it in pots.  I’ve got at least three different sorts in six or eight little pots, this dark pink, the blue, and a pale pink one . . . which I only just stopped from accidentally obliterating a new little clump of–I think it must regenerate if you leave a scrap in the ground–about a fortnight ago, stuffed it in another pot . . . and, gallant creature, it’s flowering.  The bizarre thing is that I took a bunch of it up to Third House a few years ago and it disappeared.  Maybe next door’s evil terrier dug it up and ate it.

Random primrose.

Primroses are a big favourite with me.  I have no idea where this one came from.  I was clearing out pots and this one had some clearly primrose leaves growing at one edge so I said, okay, fine, go for it.  Cowslips, just by the way, garden primroses’ wild cousins, which are some kind of endangered, are a weed in my garden.  Another few weeks I’ll be ankle deep in them.

Hyacinth

I love the variety of colour in most hyacinth flowers.  That’s not just blue or purple, you know?  Speaking of ankle deep, in a week or two I will be knee deep in blooming hyacinths.  I keep buying them to force over the winter and then . . . you have these perfectly functional bulbs at the end of your fit of botanical self-indulgence and all they ask is a small corner outdoors and a bit of dirt . . . they’re frost-hardy, they’re tough, and apparently mice would rather eat other things.†  And they produce one fat fabulous heavenly smelly flower every spring.  Except that this is a very small garden and I’m running out of SPACE.  How do you reforce bulbs?  I know you can prepare your own by putting them in the fridge for a bit but after having their constitutions screwed up like that, how long do they need in the garden being normal before you can do it again?

Pots. Lotsa pots.

I have made reference to my pots-in-pots-in-pots gardening habits.  In the back left-hand corner there are at least four levels.  And that doesn’t count the fact that there are several pots in levels two and three.  The pink plastic bucket by the kitchen door is my compost bucket, although it goes to the town compost maker, not a hot fermenting corner of this garden.  As a compost bucket it has no holes in its bottom, so when it rains, it fills up.  Found a drowned mouse about a week ago–sorry, but YAAAAAAAAY.  Mice are vermin††–just in time to prevent the hellterror from engaging in close acquaintance.  She now checks that bucket very very carefully every time I open the door, and if nothing is better on offer she stands by the door and stares at it.

And the little square grey thing in the bottom right-hand corner is my maximum-minimum thermometer.  Love.  I am not a very comprehensive weather geek but I LOOOOVE having a max/min.  They are one of these things that for inexplicable reasons go out of fashion–at just about the time that your last one stops working–and it takes you YEARS to find a replacement.  I hope this one lives a long time.

Potting up

Yesterday three boxes of tubers arrived, two of begonias and one of dahlias.  All of these things are frost-tender.  I spent a couple of hours in the sunshine yesterday afternoon potting them up–I potted all of them up the day the arrived!!!!!!  How utterly fantastic is that–and so of course we had a frost last night.  The indoor jungle lives.  It would have been so much easier if they’d just still been in three small, tidy cardboard boxes.

And it will probably freeze again tonight.  So I’d better get back to the cottage and schlepp a lot of grubby pots indoors again.  Feh.  Gardening.  It’s as mad as critters.

* * *

* Well.  When it stops raining I love spring.

** Except for the lilacs.  Lilacs are worth it.^

^ Lilacs would GROW.  Don’t talk to me about roses, AKA your very expensive annuals if you live in Maine.  Lilacs only rioted for a few weeks but by golly they RIOTED.  And they required zero care, as I should know, since those were my pre-gardening days, and I took my landscape as a given.  I had massive lilac hedges around my little house, but they seemed like just another feature like one bathroom and a long skinny kitchen.

*** Is it a rose?  No?  Go away and don’t bother me.^

^ Does it grow under roses?  No?  Go away and don’t bother me.  Although in my current garden it perforce grows under roses because there isn’t anywhere else.

† Tulip bulbs, for example.  Snarl.

†† They eat tulip bulbs.