This is usually for my sisters who want to see how our early season gardening has been going. So, if this doesn't interest you all that much, you have my permission to pass on today's entry in Road Tips.
We've had a pretty good spring around the Quad Cities. It started out warm and dry, then it went to wet and cool. Finally about two weeks ago we went from temperatures and rainy conditions found on average in early April to hot and dry weather like you'd find in late July. We had a high of 95 degrees here in the Quad's about two weeks ago and it hit 91 on our thermometer over the Memorial Day weekend. Other than a heavy downpour that brought us about two inches of rain on May 25, the weather the past couple of weeks has been amazingly great.
Our plants are rocking this year. All two dozen of our rose bushes made it through the winter - the first time in memory that happened. I tried something different last fall - I raked up the leaves from the yard and put them over the base of the rose bushes. Then I put hardwood mulch over the leaves and watered the living crap out of them before the first hard freeze. It helped that we had a lot of snow this past winter to help insulate the rose bushes. Not long after we got back from Hawaii in early March, the weather was getting warm enough to promote some growth on the roses. Initially, we were worried about a couple bushes in the rose garden next to the garage wouldn't come back, but they began to show life in April with the warm weather and we breathed a sigh of relief that we wouldn't have to buy any new rose bushes this year.
Actually, our first rose bush to open up was around May 8 - a full three weeks earlier than what is usually normal for our rose bushes to bloom. Cindy took a class in nature photography about a month ago and the instructor told her that everything was about three weeks early this year in this region. We'd heard that the annual Tulip Time festival in Pella was nearly void of tulips because the tulips bloomed early and had lost their petals long before the mid-May celebration. The same thing happened to our tulips that Cindy had planted last fall - by mid-May, all the petals were gone. But, by Memorial Day last weekend, the majority of our rose bushes had bloomed out and there were a stunning amount of roses on some of the bushes.
We're also more cognizant of the feeding and care of the roses this year. We've already given them a monthly liquid fertilizer/disease control solution and have sprayed them for bugs (beetles and aphids) about three or four times now. I have to say this is most healthy our rose bushes have ever looked.
One other interesting aspect about an early spring - it was also one of the earliest times in memory of the return of the wrens. We had wrens by the first week of April - nearly a full month before we normally see them. I kept hearing what sounded like a wren off in the distance, but dismissed it as some other migratory bird. But in talking to the guy who sells us our bird feed, he told me that the wrens did, indeed, come back early. He did say, however, that the goldfinch population was very low due to a winter kill of many of those colorful birds in the area. We then noticed that our thistle feeders weren't going down all that much. But over the past 10 days, we've suddenly noticed an uptick in the number of goldfinches at the feeder. A few evenings ago we counted five bright male goldfinches on the feeder in back.
Our vegetables and herbs are also doing very well so far. With the exception of a late season frost the second week of May - and having to replant our basil (Sweet, Genovese and Lemon) due to too much rain earlier in May - everything has been going according to plan. We planted three tomato bushes in the garden this year - a Better Boy, a Roma and a Grape/Cherry. We planted a red bell pepper plant in a large pot behind the garage and Cindy planted an ornamental pepper out in the berm. We learned that if you pick the first pepper off the plant when it's almost full grown, it fools the pepper plant into thinking that it has to grow more to make up for the loss of the first pepper. We did that last year and we've never had so many sweet red bell peppers as we did. We still have some cut up in the freezer.
Our berm out back continues to be an on-going project. Cindy wanted me to mulch the berm this spring because the weeds were so bad that she couldn't keep up. It's been a double-edged sword for us as the mulch is helping keep the moisture in the ground, but we've had so much rain in April and into May that it's not getting a chance to dry out. The water table is so high around here that our sump pump is running nearly non-stop creating a nice little swampy marsh in the front yard where the water comes out.
Speaking of the front yard, the wild rose bushes have come back tremendously in front of the house. We planted impatiens in the window boxes as Cindy decided that a potpourri of flowers just didn't work out that well. And the perennials around our maple tree in the yard have turned into a mini-jungle. The irises and columbines were huge this year. The ground cover is thick and heavy and it's finally looking the way I envisioned it to be when Cindy started to plant perennials rather than annuals under the tree.
Another surprising area for us this year is our hosta beds along the west side of the house. This side doesn't get a lot of sun due to a large maple tree that is in our neighbor's yard, but the plants have just been going nuts this spring. It's been a perfect combination of moisture and temperature to enhance the growth of these plants.
About the biggest problem we've had this spring is the amount of maple seed "helicopters" that came down from the maple tree up front and the large maple tree next doors. Unfortunately, when they all decided to drop, we were in the midst of a three-day stretch where we were getting a stiff wind out of the west. The vast majority of the ones from our neighbor's tree landed in our yard, in our gutters, in our flower beds - all over the place. And there were millions of 'em. We're now having to get down and pull them out by hand and it's a major hassle.
But that's about all the problems we've had so far. Even the peony bush that we've threatened to dig up because it's getting old and hadn't had a lot of blooms over the past couple years is flourishing this spring. We've lived here about eight years now and it's taken a lot of time - and money - to get our yard the way it is right now and I'm happy with it. We just planted a couple of dahlias and this weekend we're going to plant an orange azalea bush up in front. Walking around the yard surveying the plants and flowers in the early morning sunshine is a great start to my day.
Love this Will. It all looks wonderful and shows the tremendous amount of work and care you and Cindy have put into your beautiful yard.
Posted by: Cindy White | June 05, 2010 at 08:14 AM