SUNSHINE!!

Yeeeaaayyy the sun's out!  It's not 40 degrees yet, but it's not windy and the sun's warm, so great day to get out there.  You notice that I didn't say get out in the garden?  This is not a good time to step into your gardens because you don't know where everything is yet, and you compress the soil too much.  So just get your small folding rake and gently clean out the beds of debris.
This is also a great time to prune your roses and shrubs that don't bloom in spring. My next note will be about tools.

New Hellebores

Hellebores, or Lenten Rose or Christmas Rose.  There are two species that grow here really well, and their common names reflect when they bloom.  Well, here in Rochester, they start to bloom in late winter as soon as the snow melts.  Their foliage is evergreen until spring when they begin to bloom, then I usually trim off the brown leaves.  This photo is of a new cultivar I just found.  What a gorgeous flower!!

SPRING BIRDS

Just a thought.......as I was looking through my bird guide.......this should be a very good year to see the warblers as they come through.  They are usually up in the tree tops, and it's hard to see them, but this year the trees are going to leaf out later.  Warblers are some of the prettiest birds we see around here.

Well it was still a bit too cold to do any serious planting, but I was able to put a few pansies in the pot and I used some yellow-twigged dogwood branches to add a little more color.  It at least says spring better than evergreen branches.

Calling out Spring!!

If you are in the upstate New York area, and you're anything like me, you have some serious cabin fever raging.  Here's my cure, and BTW I find that I do this every year, just at slightly different times because of weather.  I'm going to go to my favorite local greenhouse and buy me some pansies.  They take the frost without too much trouble. Rochester is going to have about another week or 10 days of frosty nights. I'm not saying they won't lose their flowers that are fully out from the greenhouse, but they won't die, and they will continue to flower from the buds that are formed, and will grow new ones.  In many cases they will survive and come back next year, especially if you plant them in a partly shaded, well-drained moist area (morning sun).  This picture is a client's porch pot that I decorated for winter.  I'm going tomorrow to redo it for spring.  I'll post the after pic.  I put pansies all over her gardens where she can see them from her favorite window.  It's what we Irish like to call 'a lift of the heart'!