Timing... Spring's gotta be here soon!

I've done nothing in my own garden yet. Nothing at all. And yet the crocus and iris near that red-twig are making a show of early spring. Indeed this is the year I'll want to hard prune the red-twig Cornus, but maybe I'll wait a bit.

Out in the gardens around town we're focusing on that early spring shrub pruning. Cotinus and Cornus, Salix and Roses are all getting some good attention as the season pushes onward.

The designers are busy replacing or re-working winter trashed areas of the garden. As we remove the whipped Phormiums (notice the partly flat one behind these irises) and Hebes, sometimes a good amount of space opens. The obvious sustainable solution is drought tolerant, native oriented plants, but maybe now we also have to think more about cold hardy plants too. If the air temps are low enough long enough (which they were this winter) the soil levels drop too chilling rootballs that may not be able to take it. So now Phormium which doesn't mind a bit of snow and ice is resembling a very bad hair-day. The big ones can be pretty hard buggers to dig out, for sure. It can be somewhat refreshing to rip out things that didn't make it and start over.


I'l end this post with a bit by the great mad man poet e.e. cummings... (read it a few times out loud...)

"Spring is like a perhaps hand..
(which comes carefully

out of Nowhere) arranging
a window, into which people look (while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here) and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and fro moving New and
Old things, while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there) and

without breaking anything."