Spring Crazies Part 4

Here at Procrastinatoe Gardens, work is progressing ever so slowly and everything is topsy turvy.  We have the Formal Garden destroyed.  It looks awful.  I'm halfway done digging out the perennials and it's slow going.  Carl is putting a new wall in of flat limestone that we had ripped out two years ago when we put in the Pachyberm Bed.  (We're weird, we like to rotate our rocks.)

Since May 1, we've gone from this look below:

To this look:

New Wall in the Formal Garden, coming along---about 10' of wall done and 120' to go..............where the dirt in front of the wall is used to be the perennial bed.  It will be seeded down with grass as soon as we're done with the wall.

Just like every other Spring, My GADS tendencies are in high gear;  I'll be on my way to water the flowers in the greenhouse only to discover the watering can is missing.  Wracking my feeble memory for when I would have last used one of my four (yes, four) watering cans, I recall I had gone to transplant a few daylilies in the farthest reaches of the yard, so I set off on the quest to see if the can is there.

Halfway to the Back Forty, I see a patch of pretty daffodils and remember I was going to take some pictures of them as they won't last too long in the warmer weather we have been finally having.  Back in the house to get Joel's camera (which I will have to buy from him soon, since I use it more than he does, poor guy) and outside to see what's new in Daffodil Land. 

It's a good thing I took these pictures the other day,  because Sunday afternoon we had a tremendous thunderstorm complete with 1" hail.  Daffodils, tulips and other flowering things don't much like hail, so things aren't so pretty right about now.  My hostas weren't thrilled with the flying ice pellets either, but we were so lucky compared to other parts of the country which were devastated by tornadoes.  Such a Spring it has been!

King Alfred? King Kong? 

I was going to attempt to name these daffodils, but I have to admit to something else going wrong with me:

1. My memory just ain't what it used to be and
2. I could do an internet search for the names of all the daffodils but
3. I'm lazy.

Late last fall I bought a whole bunch of daffodil bulbs in bags from Big Box Stores around here when they were clearancing them out.  I had to chisel the frozen dirt to put them in but it was worth it.  They were heavily discounted at most places I looked in early December. There are exceptions to every rule though; one store only discounted their remaining stock 20% off which is too bad.  I happened upon heaping bags of bulbs in that store in  January, forlornly sitting with the last of the Christmas merchandise.  I was tempted to buy them then, but didn't know how I'd blast through snowbanks to get to frozen dirt.  I wonder what the shelf life is of a daffodil? (I know, the internet probably has the answer, it's lazy me again.)  I'll get back to you on that.

This is a tiny daffodil but is just packed with petals.  Luckily it doesn't droop from the weight.

I really like the tiny daffodils with the multi-branching habit.  They are so delicate-looking but tough as nails.

And hereafter are a bunch more:

Daffodils looming over some tiny species tulips. 

These big frilly double daffodils are very pretty too, but can't hold their heads up off the ground, especially when it rains.

These three were peeking out from under our fence last Thursday which made me smile.

We have one lone hyacinth bulb in the gardens and Carl stepped on it when we were placing some of the big rocks along the Lane Bed from the Formal Garden remodeling job.  I was so sad (and so was he) to see the poor thing flat on the ground, but the next morning, it popped right back up again.  I must remember to plant more hyacinths this fall, love their color and fragrance.

And they are apparently Carl-proof, too!

Since I am transplanting all the perennials in the Formal Garden to new homes around the yard I have come to appreciate the flowers that were in that overgrown mess much more.  These are some primulas which were buried in a bunch of quack grass this Spring.  They seem to like their new home in the Woodland Bed.

I almost chucked all the stuff that was in that bed earlier this year, now I'm glad I didn't.  Sometimes I get overwhelmed by the amount of work involved in downsizing. I still think closing up a bed is more work than creating a new one because it's hard to find places for everything once you dig them up and divide them.  Lucky for my plants and for me, there are some people interested in taking divisions off my hands.  Now if I only had the time to get them all dug and delivered.

I was walking by the Quarry Hill garden the other day and was amazed to see tulips growing out there.  I didn't plant them; they must have come in with the fill we used for building the hill which came from our compost piles from over the years.  Not bad placement for volunteer tulips, though.

Once again, I don't know the names, but these tulips have been with us since we started gardening.   They are amazingly hardy.

 

We had some much warmer weather this weekend and the tulips and daffodils are on their way out.  We have a few left to bloom yet, but I'm not sure how many are going to after the hailstorm.  But at least we were able to enjoy many of them for quite awhile.  This is the latest I can remember having spring bulbs blooming in quite some time, but it was less than a month ago that we had snow on the ground.

I have so much more to tell you about all the goofiness going on around here, but it's already 2AM and this ol' unit needs some sleep. 

 Never a good sign when the sky gets that dark in midafternoon.

Off to don the sleep apnea mask of Darth Karen and say a prayer of thanks that we still have a roof over our heads after the wild weather. 

See you next year, daffodils...maybe by then I'll know your names.  

Probably not.