On-the-go Gardening
Tag Archives: peony
Mother Nature, are you being sneaky?
I checked in the front, South bed today and my daffodils are in bloom. What?! This warm weather is really stirring up the activity on the lot. When I checked my post for my daffodils last year, they had bloomed around the end of April. Are they early this year?…or maybe last year they were late? It’s going to be fun comparing my growing notes and garden photos from this year to the previous.
The peonies in the back bed have poked their shoots above the ground. I also spotted the tiny blades of the dwarf irises sticking out of the mulch in the fence bed. The foxglove, also in the gate bed, has some healthy new spring growth. If next weekend is going to be as nice, I’ll reset some plant tags and run a full inventory check.
Fieldtrip : John Ball Park
My Better Half and I took a stroll this evening through John Ball Park. I believe volunteers from MSU’s master gardener program care for the landscaped sections of the park. As a result, it’s always a lovely place to visit with it’s very own rose garden.
As mentioned before, I do not know much about the care of roses. That’ll have to change because boy, oh boy, are some of those plants pretty. I snapped photos of the different roses in the park so I can identify them at a later date. Maybe, once educated a bit more in their care, I will purchase some for our lot.
There are also some nice “berms,” simple, circular beds whose soil is slightly raised above ground level, at the park. In one of the free gardening seminars I attended, the presenter spoke of how to construct them. I may reserve the idea of a raised bed just for a little vegetable patch. To create changes in elevation on our lot (which is very much needed), I could give a few berms a try.
Other things blooming on the lot: peonies in the sidewalk bed (pink with frills), little red roses in the front bed, the coral bells in Loki’s bed, nasturtium, Jupiter’s beard, foxglove and rose campion in the back bed, the nicotiana in the fence bed, and the spiderwort and bachelors button in the alleybed. The lavender and hollyhock both are budding.