poplar road

Tulips, about two inches out of the ground in places, a few daffodils (not many in this garden though I hope to fix that next year), irises, lamb's ear, columbine, poppy, and of course the indestructible and prickly wild rose are all starting to come in. But, more often than not, they aren't growing where I want them to, or they're being overtaken by long grasses, mint (a weed, here, though it smells too nice to get rid of), and something I think is called nettle marsh. With the sun so warm this weekend, I thought I'd get a head start on my flower beds and clean up, even though it's too frosty still to plant anything.

I'll need a spade and more patience to get rid of the grass, but I did make a dent in the mass of last year's weeds and leaves (a lovely bonfire pile for next weekend, actually) and some of the beds are clear enough that I could sow my poppy, columbine and lupin seeds, as soon as the ground stops freezing solid.

I did a silly thing, though. When Richard and I gathered most of the seeds from the gorgeous field of poppies on the south side of the house, I added to the bags some seeds from my lupins and columbine. The wild columbine, unfortunately, loves shade... so I have to identify them in the midst of a mass of tiny black poppy grains, and put them aside for the dappled shade under the crabapple tree on the north side of the house.

I hope everything grows - my plan is to transfer most of these flowers to proper beds, of which we have so many, and till last year's "field" of poppies and nasty weeds into a decent lawn with just the maple tree and daffodils round its base to break it up. Also in that part of the yard are a million shoots from the black currant bushes. They're growing up amongst my irises. Not good. The solution, I think, is to dig up all the irises I can salvage, remove the tumbledown rock wall, and carve away that entire section to get rid of the black currant altogether.

My other plan, thanks to several different gardening programs which all say the same thing, is to reduce both moisture loss and weed infestation by spreading a truckload of bark mulch over all the beds that I manage to revive this spring. No point baring all that soil just to have half of it covered in that nasty prickly yellow weed, and the other half dry up and blow away. I'm just lucky the only thing I have to buy is the mulch; all the flowers I could possibly want right now are growing in the garden already, they just need some order and a chance against the weeds.

I'm really muddling through, and having an acre property that was ignored by the previous owners for ten years means I have a heck of a lot of catching up to do. But if I get fruit on the trees this year, some flowers on the forsythia and wisteria, and flower beds that look tidy and colourful even if they're not very aesthetically arranged, I'll be thrilled.

Tuesday is my next free day to spend in the garden again. More raking, more pruning, and maybe even a little digging. It's supposed to get warmer so we'll see. I might sow those poppies after all, considering the giant variety orange ones are well on their way already. I've had enough white - bring on the colour!