What would Jane Austen Grow?

A busy week and a nasty cold kept me in bed on Saturday. I’m usually not whiny about being sick but was miserable. My husband had the bug first and is still loudly coughing. I was resigned to spending my only free, fair weather weekend in months inside. Imagine my surprise when Sunday afternoon arrived and I felt up to doing a little yard work. I wasn’t going to push myself, only do a little of this and a little of that. I even talked my husband into helping. It was so lovely and we were very productive. Mitch pruned the grapes and I cut back hardy fuchsias, ornamental grasses and some perennials. Then we must have went mad from the sun because we finally removed a major branch from our Japanese Snowbell that had made it look lopsided. We were so happy with the results that we lightened up the Nandina Plum Passion, limbed up the Spring Bouquet Viburnum and Mitch actually used the electric hedge trimmers on the Magic Carpet Spiraea. We filled up the yard debris container and still have a small pile in the back yard!
My garden is on a tour in June and so it has to look great. We moved into our house in the summer of 2001. Most of the planting didn’t happen until 2002 and 2003. Everything has grown enough now that I needed to open things up a bit and create a distinction between trees and shrubs. There are already 2 beds that need to be entirely overhauled and 2 spots where I want to create new plantings. It’s great when we have some non-rainy days this time of year before it is so hectic that I have no days off with my husband. Even though gardening is lovely to enjoy in solitude, I often get much more done when I work with Mitch. Of course, he picks up after me so maybe that’s why I enjoy working with him so much.
While we were outside, we had a visit from a hummingbird. There is a pair that has definitely spent the winter here, somewhere in my yard perhaps. One of them perched at the top of the Japanese Snowbell and sang us a little tune. Our two dogs, Tipper and Tumbles and their cousin, Frances, also enjoyed being outside. They find a soft spot to lay down and then move to the next soft spot as we work our way around. That aggravated me for a while until I decided to leave their favorite spots open or covered with the most forgiving of groundcover.
We made another pleasant discovery about our lazy vermiposting. We have a great population of worms in our soil. They have improved the soil structure in many of our beds. After our failed attempts at composting, Mitch read about vermiposting. So our lazy experiment began in our raised vegetable garden. When the plants were done, we started dumping leaves and vegetable debris on top of them. We threw in coffee grounds and tea bags, too. I was worried because it had gotten a little deep in one spot and I was afraid it wouldn’t break down in time for this year’s garden. Mitch dug in delicately and was very proud to report many active worms there. I still don’t think they’ll eat their way through the whole pile before May 1st but we’ll see.
I was not as happy to see that the slugs and snails have already been very active, already decimating the sweet violets that were blooming beautifully last week. I applied Espoma slug and snail control that contains iron phosphate, a more dog-friendly product. We’ll see if it takes care of them.
I’m already seeing things at the nursery that I can’t live without. The Jacob Hellebore could fit nicely in the pot on my front porch. There were new Frostfire Dianthus in bloom and my Dianthus in pots are not looking nearly as fresh. I guess the good thing in I don’t have any free time to garden for a few weeks so I can resist tempation for now.