daffodils

The Body Can Take Only So Much

/ handmadebyjo / 5 Comments

140818 Patio Garden

Ever feel like you’ve bitten off more than you can chew?  That’s what I’m feeling today.  The photo above is of the stone patio on the southeast side of the house.  There is (was) a perennial garden that ran around the edge of it that has been there since the beginning of time, I swear.  It had irises, phlox, peonies, various herbs and enough daffodils to populate the sides of every road in town.

I have been thinking about digging up this garden for a few years now but every summer it has been just too hot to do it.  With all the other gardens I’ve dug so far this summer I figured I would tackle one last one.  The decision was made earlier in the year when only a few of the irises blossomed.  They were too crowded.  The daffodils were insane every year for decades but this year there weren’t quite many blossoms as I’m used to seeing and I took that as a sign as well.

Today was the perfect weather to spend outdoors doing anything.  Blue sky, breeze, cool.  I started digging at 8:30 and finished around 3:30.  Well, I stopped because I couldn’t dig anymore, my body wouldn’t let me.  I dug and divided oregano, three huge clumps of iris, three huge garden phlox, a sedum, a patch of chives about three feet in diameter, a small peony and hundreds of bulbs.  I must confess I divided the first phlox and planted six good size plants in the front garden but the other two I dug up went out to the compost heap except for a small piece that I gave to a neighbor.  Other things were moved to other gardens but the rest of it is in buckets waiting to go back into the ground.

I have a very large bucket full of bulbs, it weighs over 50 pounds and the digging is a little over half done.  Those daffodils started out as a forced pot of six in 1978 – a gift sent to my sister during a hospitalization.  My mother planted them in the spring and for the last 36 years they have been expanding exponentially.

The interesting thing about this garden is how it has gotten higher up on the wall as the years have gone by.  The lawn has gotten higher and the garden seems to have gone along for the ride.  In digging this side out I have been able to expose more of the wall of the patio.  I think this is due to mulching the grass where it’s cut over so many years.  It creeps up on you and always comes as a surprise to me when I start digging.

The plan is to finish digging the rest of it in the next day or two and plant everything that’s staying by the end of the week.  Fortunately most of the heavy digging is almost done, I have about a third of the garden to go but I have to tell you, the way my body feels right now getting back out there tomorrow morning is making me wish for rain.

Thrive Where You’re Planted

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During the Blizzard of ’78 my sister was in the hospital for some emergency surgery.  Her later to be mother-in-law sent her a pot of daffodils – there were a dozen in the pot as I recall.  Once they had died back they were planted in a border garden around the patio.  Over the years they have naturalized to the point of hundreds.  They are all over New England at this point.  Everywhere I have had a garden they are now too numerous to count.  They have been given away to friends and family in  MA, VT, NH and CT.  They are now in full bloom in Enfield, around the front of the house, along the driveway, in the perennial garden in the back yard.  They are scattered all down the bank going into the back forty in Rowe.  These amuse me most of all.  For years my mother’s mulch pile was over that bank.  There was a stone wall there many years ago and it was completely grown in with trees.  She would dig up things that she no longer wanted or bulbs were perhaps pulled along with the weeds – over the bank they would all go.

I have planted many plants in a perennial garden only to watch them migrate to where they really want to be.  They will self seed in a sunnier or wetter spot and the original will die back.  It’s no use trying to get them to grow where you want them to, they just grow where they are happy.  That’s how I feel at times about being caught between Enfield and Rowe, suburban and rural, noisy and quiet.  I just want to be where it’s sunny and quiet.  Then I think about those daffodils. They speak volumes about thriving where you are.  It doesn’t mattered the soil type, the sunlight, the moisture – they all seem to like where they are and continue to multiply year after year.  In my head I know that’s how it should be – thrive where you are – but some days (especially sunny spring ones) I just want to be in a quiet spot.  Maybe transplanting daffodils.

Happy Earth Day – go dig in the dirt!

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Happy First Day of Spring

/ handmadebyjo / 3 Comments

Spring

 

I photographed this as I went out the door to work this morning.  It’s a little deceptive because these bulbs are under a cedar tree so the snow didn’t really accumulate there.  It’s nice to see they don’t care.

I could do without the snow now.  I’m over it.  I know there won’t be another snowshoeing day until next year.  We will just have to contend with cold, slush and ice until it finally warms enough for it all to go.  I love spring, the warming of the earth, going through the perennial beds to see what coming up and where.  The spring bulbs are the first to poke their heads up.

These daffodils are everywhere.  The photograph was taken in Enfield but there are hundreds in Rowe.  They started out as a pot of 12 bulbs that Mabel gave my sister when she was in the hospital for surgery during the blizzard of ’78.  Sue planted them in a flower bed around the patio in Rowe.  Over the years they’ve been dug up, divided and moved everywhere.  There are hundreds that bloom around the patio and now in other gardens.  They are over the bank going to the back forty because that was my mother’s mulch pile years ago.  I’ve given the bulbs to people all over New England and moved some to Enfield.

I think that’s my favorite part about perennial gardening – giving plants away and getting plants from other gardeners.  We have peonies that came from my third grade teacher’s garden, irises from my mother’s best friend.  I have a gas plant that came from an abandoned garden center in Enfield that has moved with me three times.  They are all beautiful in bloom but for me the true beauty is the reminder of gardeners that I loved that are no longer here.