Spring Blooms

The daffodils have taken over the back yard, for now.  With a few tulips second in command.

I have the names of the varieties of all my daffodils written down, somewhere.  When we bought the house, the yard already had plenty of big, bold yellow ones, so I welcomed the infusion of a bunch of fancier white ones from my mother-in-law.

These tulips are sort of new.  They had been languishing in a pot where they never bloomed.  I finally remembered to relocate them into a flower bed, and voila!  

And another primarily white type of daffodil.  You can't tell from the picture that these are pretty large for daffodils.  When the daffodils, paper whites, and hyacinths are all in bloom at once, it's one of the hands-down prettiest times in the garden :)  

Unearthing

Today was a fine sunny day, and the perfect one to get digging in the garden.  That being said, spring bulbs are some of my favorite things because they're up and blooming already, and I haven't had to do a thing!

My grandmother had a green thumb, and always had Crocuses and Snow Glories in the yard.  Last year, on a spring farm visit, I saw a few Snow Glories had made it outside of the yard fence.  I took the opportunity to dig them up and transplant them to my garden.  Lo and behold, here they are, doing well in a bed of Angelina Sedum with some Wild Strawberries mixed in.  

I did get a lot of actual work done in the backyard, though.  Over the winter, Justin built me cedar frames for my two vegetable and herb beds.  I use these to follow the square foot method of gardening.  There are sixteen squares in each frame, and you plan and plant each square separately.  I got about one third of the squares planted this afternoon, mostly with lettuce and radishes, but also some basil and cilantro.  

You can see that one square is already occupied by a small chives plant that overwintered successfully.  What you can't see is that one square where I had planted Red Orach last year (a funky pinky red salad green) managed to reseed itself, so I'm already ahead of the game there.  My cold frame is to the rear - I planted that today with a lettuce mix.

In other plant news, I'm fortunate to have a MIL that shares her fabulous plant collections with me.  We visited over Easter, and I came home with several different succulents.  The photo above shows a type of Gasterhaworthia - a cross between Gasteria and Haworthia that has a pinkish hue.  

And this is one of her large beds of Scillia, another type of spring bulb.  They are very similar to Snow Glories, except that the flowers are nodding, or downward-facing.

Seeds to Sow

When I was young and hanging out at Grandma's on winter days, one of the my favorite things to do was look through the seed catalogs that would flood her mailbox.  My Grandmother had a very large garden and ordered dozens of seed packets each year, and so got tons of catalogs, too.  If I was really lucky, and I usually was :), she'd add a flower or veggie variety that caught my eye to her order.

That interest she fostered in me still drives me to put out a small garden each year.  I don't have a lot of space in my tiny backyard, but I do have some good Lancaster County dirt, so I try to make the best of it.  I tend to pick tomatoes because they're fairly easy and the colors and shapes they come in fascinate me.  Always something new or different.

Grandma would collect butter tubs and milk jugs and anything that would hold dirt, more or less, to start her seeds in. I use peat pellets, they help me keep the operation organized. 

An old pencil is great for poking little holes in the peat, then covering up the seeds.  These are pepper seeds getting the treatment.  The last few years I have gotten my funky heirloom seeds from Baker Creek Seed Co.  They seem to be a really great company and have a crazy good selection of stuff.   

In December, I heard about an outfit called DollarSeed.  The selection is limited, but I paid about 85 cents per packet of seeds, so I can't complain.  I'm sure I'll be ordering from them again.

So, here's the end result:  four kinds of tomatoes, two kinds of cucumbers, tomatillos, and two kinds of peppers.  The paper you can see in some of the pictures is my chart, which is the way I manage to keep what I planted where straight.   

 I always plant more than I need, in case some don't make it the transplant stage.  Most of them do, of course, so then I'm stuck pawning the extras off to friends and family.  So come May, if plants show up on your porch I don't know a thing about it!

A peculiar crop in the garden

One thing I noticed in the backyard, sometime in early July, is that a bumper crop of spiders ripened up!  Webs here and there and everywhere.

I am no fan of spiders when they are in my house with me.  But I don't mind them out of doors and minding their own business.

About three years ago, I found my first backyard garden spider.  Since then, about midsummer, I find one or two.  This year, though, this year, I have four.  These are strangely pretty orb weavers and can get rather large for comfort.

And funnily enough, three of them are living in the same little clump of irises.  That's how I got the pictures, their webs are practically on top of each other.

The largest one had a bumblebee in her web a few days ago.  I'm afraid I might find a small child next!  :)

Harbingers

Spring has finally, perhaps, sprung?  Bits of color are showing up, in any case.  When we bought our house, I was happy to find dozens and dozens of daffodils in the backyard.  Then, my mother-in-law gave me dozens more, plus allium, narcissus, sedum galore, and hellebore, and I rounded all of those out with some crocus.

Crocus nestled in Angelina sedum

Needless to say, spring is one of my favorite times in the garden.  Weeds are not awake yet, the perennials are coming out of hibernation, and the bulbs are going gonzo.  We're not quite there yet, but we're definitely headed in the right direction.

I have a nice collection of various kinds of "hens and chicks,"  also thanks  to my mother-in-law.  They've spent the winter curled up in tight little buds and are just now thinking of uncurling.

I have a lot of sedum that acts as ground cover, but I also have a few that mound.  I can't remember, off the top of my head,what this type is called, but its a favorite.  Right now, tiny little buds are emerging at the base of last years stalks.  They'll be edged in pink and will fan out symmetrically when they get bigger.