Spring flowers

The flowering quince is flowering. Still tiny, but already attracting bumblebees. I never realised I'd planted so many different types of daffodils and narcissus, but each patch is different! And the bleeding hearts are magnificently-shy this year!

Just a couple of blocks further away from the water and the exposure to the winds off the bay, lilac and dogwoods are already flowering. Mine are more reticent: the redbud is still budding, the lilac is not ready at all yet. But this make all the flowers last so much longer!

Fresh coat for the house

Andy from Dragon has started painting the house for me.

I found old pictures that showed the cement part of the house as a light grey. I don't know if it was an earlier paint colour, or just the bare-new cement, but it looked "right". So it is going to be grey, again.

New rose garden!

This is the ex-pond-now-rose-and-lavendar-garden. The roses are just starting to bud, and the lavendar is all looking good. Will take a few months before it looks like a real rose garden, but it's so much better than the stinky, leaky pond!

New home on Park Drive

It is really, really nice to see a new home growing from the property where another house burned down, a couple of years ago. It took a while... the wreck was there for a long time, then it was a demolished wreck for a long time, then all-of-a-sudden foundations were built. And the framing is going really quickly: this morning, the second floor was framed, and by this evening, the roof is all framed in too. The house is a living skeleton waiting for its arteries and skin.

When I drove past at lunchtime, I thought they were building a roof deck at the south-east corner, above the first floor. "They'll have a really nice view!" I thought. "Nice to see someone building with the views and the surroundings in mind." But now I see it's "just" a low-sloping roof in that corner. It will look really nice, but I do think they have missed an opportunity: why not take advantage of the views that no-one else can have?

So good to see someone making this their home. All along Park Drive, people are working on homes, and making it a really nice street.

There's just one eyesore--the other burned house. It burned before the one now being rebuilt. It's no longer boarded up, because the storm that ripped my roof, tore down its boards and opened it further to rain and wind and rodents and raccoons.

Town of Brookhaven: where is the action on all the distressed, damaged and abandoned houses? We are still waiting!

Gardening is the cure for all ills

A week away, in California, where everything is already in flower and, while very green, is hurtling through spring towards summer. Here, spring is everything coming up at the same time. Especially weeds. And deer.

Despite the best-set plans and windchimes and obstacles, at least one small deer made its way up through the broken fence, onto the raised part of the back yard. Bambi feasted on the surviving tulips, the young hostas, young daylilies, and lettuce. Lettuce!!! Left his or her hoofprints all through the nascent rose garden, ignored the baby lavendar, and zoomed in on deer favourites. Fence repairs needed yesterday.

Knee surgery on Tuesday, and I don't know what it will do to my gardenability :-) next weekend... so today was busy. Baby herbs from Home Depot; potted-up and seeds sown and all on the deck. Baby geraniums/pelargoniums all lined up on the wall, daring a late-late frost (about 10% chance according to the wise ones). A new, dwarf Japanese maple, Acer palmatum v. dissectum virdis, in the largest blue pot which took me 15 minutes to roll from its place in the little woods (a deer or other bandit had stolen the baby dogwood that was planted in it last year). And I planted a lot of bright yellow Canna lilies in all the other blue pots (how did I collect so many blue pots already?) Maybe having them in pots, I'll remember to lift them in autumn, instead of wondering what the empty papery things are when digging in spring, which is what happened to the last cannas to arrive in the garden.

More variegated Japanese iris arrived while I was away, and having been in a soggy cardboard box outside all week, seemed very content in their new spot in the low, damp part of the front garden. Also in the box were two blue salvia, blanched white leaves struggling to get out of the box. They have gone in the bed near the mailbox.

More mulching done in the front, around the baby perrenials that are up. A tiny lupin plant, from last year's seeds. More coneflowers and a myriad of bee balm. Irises. The first cosmos seed have sprouted.

The flowering quince is almost, but not quite, ready. One of the old-fashioned just-yellow daffodils was so beautiful that all I could do was stare.

I think the pretty bush with purple berries may not have made it through the winter. The branches are dry twigs, brittle to the touch. I'll leave it a while and hope that it's a late-starter, but it's looking iffy.

The beautiful rhododendron that I planted last year in the little woods has no leaves, no buds. I don't think the deer are the guilty ones this time: more likely the long-winter, extra-soggy wetland reaching salty fingers to its roots. The branches that remain are still greenish: it may yet recover.

I just wish I would remember where I planted everything last year. But when something forgotten reappears, it's a very nice surprise.

... and I nearly forgot! Eagles!!

One of my neighbours told me that earlier in the weekend, he had seen two bald eagles, riding the thermals over the William Floyd Estate! From my street! I missed them!

Now I'm going to be looking for them constantly. I have never seen a real, live, American-icon bald eagle.

(They are not really bald, they just have lighter-coloured feathers on their heads than on their bodies.)

April Sunday

I have mulched about two-thirds of the flower beds, but still a lot to do. A bit like painting the Forth Bridge, you get to the end and have to start all over again.

The "upstairs" hostas have unfurled this weekend; beautiful almost-translucent lime-green. Those hostas "downstairs" are still pointy-nosed, held back a little by all the water late in the winter. They look very healthy though, and I'm sure that in a week's time, they will all be open and green. Or, of course, lining Bambi's tummy. (And they only remedy that will work is a six-foot fence, and it's not on the project list. I've tried all the others: soap, my hair, dog hair, rotten-eggs-and-hot-pepper spray... they all work up until the moment that Bambi is really, really hungry.)

The paeonies have thrust their little red fists through the earth, and are pausing for a rest before they grow big. I read "The Apothecaries Daughter" this week, and am now wondering if I should harvest their roots, along with many other of the plants in the garden.

The little magnolia tree is in beautiful flower, the redbud has red buds, the flowering quince is getting ready, and the red wetlands trees have taken on a ruby haze, outshone only by the willows and their flourescent light-green.

The grass has grown long. And the phragmites are taking revenge on being cut; sending spikes out into the middle of the lawn. How dare they?

It's spring. And it's very, very welcome!

Raccoons have long memories!

It has been about 18 months since Rocky Raccoon fell out of bed, underneath my den. Here's the story in case you missed it:

http://alisontoon.blogspot.com/2008/08/rocky-raccoon-falls-out-of-bed.html

In that story, take a look at the picture that shows "my home". It was a safe and cosy nook for a raccoon family, a gap at the top of one of the support pillars for the house. They had no access into the house itself, but were high up away from predators, with a small entrance that Mamma Raccoon could protect.

Very soon after the family moved out (which they did a couple of days after Rocky's adventure), I had the underside of the house properly protected and made nice, which included blocking the entrance to the raccoon hotel.

This morning, very early, I heard familiar noises under the house. Went out to the deck, looked down, and sure enough there was a familiar furry foot sticking out. "Hello Racoon," I said.

A very-very cute bandit peeped out and looked right back at me.

We stayed there for a while, having a very one-sided conversation about the suitability of the accomodation and what Bella would say when she woke up enough to notice something was going on. The raccooon didn't agree or disagree, just listened and looked, confident, cute and cheeky... and then very-slowly backed down the pillar onto the grass, and lumbered away into the woods.

Maybe it was Rocky returning to have his/her own litter in the same place?

New roses

They are:

"Scentimental" floribunda (looks like a raspberry swirl)
"About Face" grandiflora (orange shading outwards to bronze-red)
"White Out" shrub (looks like a wild rose)
"Midnight Blue" shrub rose (but the picture is deep pink-purple)
"Lagerfeld" hybrid tea (against my better judgement but it's supposed to be intensely fragrant).

And a couple of climbers too

Easter weekend

The sun is shining and it is a beautiful day.. Good Friday, and a very good Friday.

Things are still not as they should be: fences broken down, mud where there should be earth, puddles where there should be road; hoses delivering water out from flooded basements (I am so glad my home does not have a basement); trees late coming to leaf, daffodils late opening, forsythia only-just coming into bloom.

But it's all ready to burst wide open into spring.

A little, yellow bird is sitting in a tree in my back yard and singing its heart out. The red-winged blackbirds are scrapping and fighting. I hope a family of birds finds the little-house nesting box that I put up last week!

... and the egrets are back!!!!

I just saw one, coming in to land, on the wetlands facing my house. Now it really is spring!

Sunshine, we have been waiting for you!

And here it is. The sun. Shining. Reflecting on the water. Drying the puddles. Warming us.

Happy Easter weekend, everyone!

(And Happy Birthday today Dylan!)

To whoever is dumping truckloads of leaves and twigs

... please call me, before you leave the next truckload of leaves and twigs and other compostable material on Forest Road, or Lincoln, or Washington, or wherever else you think it's cool to leave them blocking the street. I have a much better place for you to put them.

I'm not being facetious--I need exactly this kind of mulch material. Though I cannot understand why anyone in their right mind would drive out here to purposely put this stuff in the middle of the street.