Spring Has Started Springing

Daffs, hellebores, and liriope in the right foreground.

We had two totally lovely days this week where I was at home and in the mood to get out there and garden. It made me remember how annoyed I was last year that I was persuaded by loyalty to stay longer at my all-consuming job, so instead of retiring by March, I was there through June. The only real difference it made - but a difference I can tell now - is that I missed most of the spring gardening season. Some things have to be done now and others are best done now.  If not done before the growing season is fully underway, some things have to wait for months or a full year, and overall it's a game of catch-up all year.

But the sun was shining, the birds were singing, daffodils and crocuses were blooming, and I could get out there and do things, not just think about it. In danger of putting myself in a bad mood from useless, old, resentment, I was able to instead celebrate the freedom I am enjoying. (Phew! Borrowing bad moods from circumstances in the past or future is a habit I'm trying to break. Also working on thoughts about the present, but that is a longer process.)

I'm a fan of fall, but early spring is actually my favorite. It's all hope and ambition. It's not too late to catch-up on neglected winter chores, but new beginnings are the theme. My body opens and expands to the sun, and I can feel my vitamin D being manufactured everywhere inside me. As I weed or brush aside old leaves, I see tiny little leaves poking up.

One day this week, I weeded by the front steps, down to the corner where liriope has over-expanded. I laboriously dug a lot of it out, from the edges in, and severely trimmed the rest. This is an ornamental, easy-care groundcover, that I am slowly, slowly, trying to eliminate entirely from my property. It has no wildlife value, and it spreads both by root and seeds, so it just appears in places I never planted it, like above. But, it also is great at holding ground and slowing erosion, so I don't want to rip it out wholesale before I'm ready to put something in its place- especially on the steep slope parts of my yard.

I also took a pass at weeding along the street outside the fence. At the low end, the neighbors have a patch of english ivy, myrtle, euonymus, and japanese honeysuckle, spiced with some poison ivy. Nasty stuff, especially together, and it requires pulling back a couple of times a year to beyond the property line. I hadn't done it at all last year, and I filled a bag and a half of vines I pulled out from my side. Here, there is a lot of good stuff that has taken hold under the vines, so I think just giving them room to breathe and eat will be enough to bring them back.

The hydrangea doesn't have leaves, so the transplants are invisible sticks here.
You can also see the rhododendron, which just might bloom this year since,

for the first time ever, it's gone a year with no deer bites.

I got ambitious and I did the first of several thrifty transplants I have planned. I dug up some suckers from the big-as-a-smartcar oak leaf hydrangea and put them inside the fence, on the lower corner. This is deep shade, so I don't expect the exuberance I see in the sun, but I think it will do ok. My intent in planting here is for the roots to hold the ground together and reduce erosion. 

A task undone last fall (lack of energy reinforced with uncertainty of how bad it would be) is cleaning up last year's leaves from the two ancient oaks that blanket this corner. I had the thought they might just decompose in place, but oak leaves really take at least a couple of years. I allowed the leaves to drift down from the slope above and fill the corner deeply, piling up against the fence. Upon close inspection this year, I think it's a mistake to allow the ground inside the fence to build up too much higher than right outside the fence. It can't be helped at this corner, but it can be prevented from piling up ever higher. So before I could plant, I had to clean up the leaves. I have an electric blower/vac, and I vacuumed up many of the leaves - they get shredded in the process. As a result, the bulk goes way down, and they will decompose much faster. Some of the shredded leaves go into my compost pile, but the consistency is such that they actually become acceptable mulch for purely bare areas. I like to re-use it on my own property, rather than send it away to be processed in the county compost factory and later buy it back in bags at Home Depot.

Outside the fence on the same corner.
This badly needs roots to stabilize it.

My next plan is to dig up some suckers from other big bushes on the property and plant them outside the fence. There is a great need to stabilize the slope there, and I'd rather not have to deal with expensive stone or wood engineering. First I'll do sprigs of bushes, and then I'll transplant some of the many thriving ground-covers I have elsewhere - but not the invasive thugs I've been pulling out! I'm thinking of my happy spring flowering natives and some fairly aggressive grasses. This is deep shade from oaks, so only certain things will thrive.   

Yay, spring!