Death in the garden
May. 8th, 2004 10:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rscThose of you who live in the northeast probably don't need reminding, but for anyone else who wasn't paying attention, this was one of those winters that's really hell on gardens. After the heavy snow in early December we thought we were all set, but it warmed up enough to melt all of it, and then it got really cold for an extended period.
So I guess I shouldn't be surprised at how many of our perennials didn't make it. The Gaura ("wandflower") that bloomed so spectacularly for all of last summer appears not to have come back, and there's not a trace of the Saponaria, the "Arctic fire" Dianthus, or the Babiana stricta (which I really didn't expect to survive, actually). More shocking is the disappearance of several old standbys: the Shasta daisies in the bed I call "Parsons' folly"; the yellow Dianthus we planted from seed a bunch of years ago; the heather and the Santolina(admittedly both of these last didn't look so great last year). I'm pretty sure the sage is dead, and so far there's no visible signs of new growth on the winter savory or the oregano, nor the young Buddleia in front; we'll wait another week or so before giving up on them.
Not that there aren't plenty of surviving plants -- I was somewhat surprised to see the notoriously short-lived Jacob's-ladder survive, and the new Bergenia, goat's-beard, and bleeding-heart are all healthy -- and there's room to try new things. Although all the thymes are pretty bare, there's green on all of them, so I assume in a couple of months they'll all look like they were in full health the whole time, wnd will be fighting each other (and everything around them) for territory.
Meanwhile things move on apace. The peas are all up, as are the ten(!) kinds of lettuce. I planted seeds of two kinds of cosmos and five(!) types of zinnia yesterday. We've cut down the two dead cherries from the "grove" in front (this is always more work than one would expect); the Great Tangle next to the driveway is all cleared out and mostly tilled -- now we have to figure out what to put there to keep the evil plants from reinvading. Always more to do.
So I guess I shouldn't be surprised at how many of our perennials didn't make it. The Gaura ("wandflower") that bloomed so spectacularly for all of last summer appears not to have come back, and there's not a trace of the Saponaria, the "Arctic fire" Dianthus, or the Babiana stricta (which I really didn't expect to survive, actually). More shocking is the disappearance of several old standbys: the Shasta daisies in the bed I call "Parsons' folly"; the yellow Dianthus we planted from seed a bunch of years ago; the heather and the Santolina(admittedly both of these last didn't look so great last year). I'm pretty sure the sage is dead, and so far there's no visible signs of new growth on the winter savory or the oregano, nor the young Buddleia in front; we'll wait another week or so before giving up on them.
Not that there aren't plenty of surviving plants -- I was somewhat surprised to see the notoriously short-lived Jacob's-ladder survive, and the new Bergenia, goat's-beard, and bleeding-heart are all healthy -- and there's room to try new things. Although all the thymes are pretty bare, there's green on all of them, so I assume in a couple of months they'll all look like they were in full health the whole time, wnd will be fighting each other (and everything around them) for territory.
Meanwhile things move on apace. The peas are all up, as are the ten(!) kinds of lettuce. I planted seeds of two kinds of cosmos and five(!) types of zinnia yesterday. We've cut down the two dead cherries from the "grove" in front (this is always more work than one would expect); the Great Tangle next to the driveway is all cleared out and mostly tilled -- now we have to figure out what to put there to keep the evil plants from reinvading. Always more to do.
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no subject
Date: 2004-05-08 01:02 pm (UTC)Sorry to hear about the losses. You could move somewhere warmer... :)