Dear gardening friends,
While the swallows may return to Capistrano, the excitement around here is the great egrets and great blue herons returning to the pond behind the garden. A great egret visited and snacked on fish on Wednesday. Then the mercury plummeted and snow fell. The egret looked most disappointed when it returned on Friday and found the pond had refrozen over.
The temperature is now on the upswing again, but the frigid weather stopped many plants in their tracks, such as this Hepatica nobilis var. acuta. It was on the cusp of blooming.
The only new blooms this week are some Crocus tommasinianus 'Ruby Giant', and a couple of Iris histriodes 'Katharine Hodgkin'.
While it's a pretty thing, the color is too pale to make much of a show when viewed from inside the house. I think I'll move some to the patio bed.
Despite the chill, the Bergenia cordifolia 'Bressingham White' has buds forming.
The other buds I'm excited about are those of Narcissus 'Pineapple Prince'.
Last year I discovered that they faced the wrong way when blooming, so I moved them to the raised bed, where they're forced to face me, painful as that may be on some days.
Newly sprouted last week are one of my favorite native wildflowers, the shooting stars.
In addtion, the Sanguinaria canadensis and Thalictrum thalictroides (Anemonella thalictroides)
started sprouting.
Instead of a squirrel atrocity, last week brought a human atrocity: the kids were on spring break and boredom had settled in, so they went outside to play. When I looked outside to see what they were doing, they had completely dug up a Clematis 'Vyvyan Pennell', severing much of the roots. It hadn't been performing well in the raised bed, so last June I replaced it with Clematis ' Evipo 008' (Franziska Maria ). 'Vyvyan Pennell' had such a healthy root system, I hated to send it to the compost pile, so I stuffed it into the nearest available hole in a relatively sunny spot. The hole was the former home of the kids' "Worm Cafe," where they used to dig and dump shredded leaves to feed worms. They hadn't done any digging there in over a year, so I figured it was fair game, more the fool me. When I asked why they dug it up, the response was "We thought it was a weed." A vining weed with a huge root system that was partially frozen into the ground. Right. I replanted it immediately, but I fear the damage is too great. We shall see.
Well that's all for this week. What's that? You heard something about hellebores? Yes, of course, most of the hellebores are about to bloom.
First will be the Christmas rose, Helleborus niger, then probably this greenish white H. x hybridus seedling,
or maybe this Helleborus x hybridus 'Pink Lady'.
The buds of Ivory Prince
remind me of rose buds. Maybe it will be the surprise opener of this season's Hellebormania. I'm certain that by next week there will be hellebores in bloom at Squirrelhaven.
Until next week, happy gardening!