Narcissi and bleeding hearts
It’s April, which means everything is in bloom. Magnolias scatter their petals in the streets. Dogwoods are opening, their buds still looking dry and brittle. Tulips, hyacinths, and daffodils flourish in beds and around mailboxes. My new hellebores have their first blooms, and the bleeding hearts are stretching out their limbs.
First hellebore
It also means I have to clean up the dead peony stalks I didn’t deal with last fall, deadhead the daffodils as they finish blooming, remove the grass from the flower beds, and put new mulch on top of the old to nourish the soil.
New growth on peony
I also regularly support the Arbor Foundation, and I just got a shipment of ten random saplings (maple, oak, spruce, dogwood, redbud) that needed to be planted around the yard. Thus, new holes dug, edgers placed around the saplings to protect them from the lawnmower, that sort of thing. (Meant to have a pic of the edgers and the saplings to put here, but I decided to take my daughter to the park yesterday instead.)
The lovely thing about April? Even with a warm spell, it’s pleasant enough to do the work, and there’s plenty of rain to keep everything greening nicely.
What about you? Any new or old projects in your yard this month?
As always, thanks for stopping by and reading!
I both miss and feel relieved that I no longer have a garden. It was a great source of joy, especially in the spring when all the bulbs came up, but it’s a lot of work and can easily become either a distraction from other stuff, or a chore that’s fallen behind…
Absolutely on both of those — distraction and chore! I rarely get out and work in the summer, as I really can’t take the combination of heat and humidity, so I’m trying to gradually shape the flower beds so I don’t have to do much with them outside of spring and fall clean-ups.