First Nice Day of Spring

Callery pear is blooming

Cool, partly sunny and in the high 60s today.  It was the first nice day of April... the 29th.  The past few days have been drizzly, gloomy, gray.  But things are starting to leaf out.

I got up at 6 a.m. to watch the royal wedding, then headed out and got the following done today:

• Moved all the Grow Lo sumacs to the hazel garden. Three more just came from Forestfarm.  The ideas is to have a massed ground cover there.
• Planted all the Chocolate Chip coleus under the Orange Dream Japanese maple.
• Planted three new Midnight Rose heucheras in the back of the Birch Garden.
• Planted three new Physostegia Miss Manners (and divided two) in Meadow's Edge.
• Planted all the inkberry hollies and fothergillas and the dwarf Oriental spruce in the new Secret Garden border.  Jim dug the holes for me.
• Planted the pots for the patio: violas and pelargoniums.  Some say violas want full sun, some say full shade.  Huh?

the view today of Olmstead's side yard

So late to leaf out, they look dead against all the greening up that is going on: the winterberry hollies, the clethra (really dead looking) the lespedeza (but there is new growth at the bottom, the voles didn't kill it), the ceanothus New Jersey Teas (same thing, new growth, but a lot of black branches).  Also late to leaf out: black gums, river birches.

first Geum bloom of the season

Magnolia 'Elizabeth' getting ready to bloom