APRIL SHOWERS BRING MAY SHOWERS

It’s a slow spring, which is great, since many plants are staying in the greenhouse longer, giving me extra time to plant.

A short post folks, as I know we are all busy with our personal lives, there are times when I get too caught up with deadlines too. I am moving offices at work, hosting an offsite with our My Little Pony team from the Hub and Hasbro (always great to meet with the director, writer and exec’s from our LA studio and the Hub), healing an index finger infection from the alpine garden ( don’t ask – but visualize that whale video on uTube when it pops and takes my nail with it), preparing a book proposal and hosting a bus load of New England Primula Society members for a garden party and cocktail party ( which, OK…. I had to cancel).

Oh, and I closed on my other house ( which is on our property -yes I finally sold it – yay!), and trying to basically just catch a breath between a long list of Powerpoint presentations including  a board presentation to our local Botanic Garden on Sunday about the Future of Guest Experience, and 3 presentations for work about exciting stuff yet stuff  I can’t really share with you ( Oh Hasbro – sometimes you are like working for Google).

You all deserve a blog post, so here are some pics from last Sunday which I’ve been meaning to share, and since it’s been raining all week, a few other dreary photos from the garden since surely, you all are getting wet weather also. Even though we all may gripe and moan about how cool and wet it has been, the plants are certainly not complaining.

Some plants cannot wait, like these Tuberoses. A row goes into the vegetable garden early, so that they can get a head start.

Scented pelargoniums and many, if not most of my plants, are still in the greenhouse where it is warm. It was 38º yesterday! That’s OK. Summer will come soon, and I’d rather have this gradual spring than one were it turns 90º instantly.

One of the biggest lemon-scented geraniums ever! I was to trim this topiary so badly, but its flowers are so nice, I am waiting until they pass.

Awesome, right? Soon I will have many cuttings from which to start a whole new bench of scented geraniums. For now, let it bloom, let it bloom, let it bloom.

That large flat of baby lettuce I was growing for salad greens is almost ready to be harvested, but I think that I will sneak a few seedling from the flat to plant in a raised bed for larger heads. Even through it’s a mesclun mix, the plants will grow into very nice heads of lettuce by early summer. It’s OK – I always do it!

A particularly nice white form of Corydalis solida, a bulb plant which many people overlook in spring bulb catalogs, but one that I promise you will become addicted to, blooms in the ephemeral garden. This woodland bed of rare bulbs and wildflowers is being redesigned currently, and most of my garden is. More on that, later.

Spring in the greenhouse also means a change of seasons, a time when many bulbs and other geophytes ( I like that spellcheck keeps wanting to change that to Neophytes!), either go dormant, or bloom – especially those from the southern hemisphere. this rare tuberous Pelargonium, which has few leaves but amazing flowers and a large, woody tuber, is blooming with it’s spidery flowers. Meet Pelargonium bowkeri from the eastern summer rainfall area of South Africa. Raised from seed, it blooms precisely on May first every year ( give or take a few days). I adore it, but it is one of those plants which always looks better in photos than in person.