Last year we were in France during April, so we missed some of the spring bulbs we planted the previous fall. This year we were here so we got to see most of them. We still missed some of the rock iris.
One of my first tasks this year when we got home — we were in Australia and New Zealand in February and March — was to get the seeds started that were delivered while we were gone. In addition to the usual tomatoes and peppers, I’m trying to start some perennials from seed for the redesigned perennial garden. I have some gaillardia, lavender cotton, heliopsis, and cardinal flower. Most of them have sprouted.
Over the winter I started on a master to-do list for the outdoors, so we have a better idea of what needs to be done when, and don’t have to think about it. I printed it out and made use of it this month. So far, so good. According to that, I have:
- Pruned the Crimson Pygmy barberry hard, since they’d never been pruned and we’re getting too large.
- Pruned the Rose Glow barberry for height, so we’ll still be able to see over them after the new growth.
- Pruned the Autumn Jazz and Blue Muffin viburnums, two other shrubs that had never been pruned and were too tall. I tried to remove about 1/3 of the stems and shorten some of the others.
- Pruned the hell out of the forsythia. We tried thinning it out a couple of years ago but we still didn’t get any blooms, so this year we took drastic action.
- Pruned the roses. It was a tough winter for roses. Most of them I had to prune close to the ground. The Frau Dagmar Hartopp did better, but I pruned those back because they had gotten too large.
In addition to the usual maintenance and reviving the perennial garden, we also have a major hardscaping project this year: redoing the deck. As I mentioned in my post on The Deck, we’ve already done it twice: once with composite decking that failed, then with cedar. Sixteen years later, the cedar is rotting on the ends, and some of the joists need work. So we’re fixing the structure and going back to composite for the decking. And while we’re at it, we’re adding waterproofing so the area underneath the deck — which is our outdoor project area — stays dry. Or drier, anyway. It will be nice to be able to paint, stain, and varnish things down there without having to worry so much about rain.
I’ll update The Deck post when the project is done.
Here are some photos from April.
