Flowers this week

This is a glorious spring day, with bright sunshine, redbuds and elms coloring up the hills, and crews out in the fields of the county doing some last prescribed burning of their grassed meadows. The doe was browsing early in the woods behind the house this morning, and the phoebes are on the nest.

It’s a great day to get things done, and my list reflects a year of planning. Here’s what I’m up to.

—More clean-up at the North Lawrence garden, which is getting tender loving care this year with cover crops and lighter planting. I was just thinking I needed to get in touch with Amy about finding a couple of hours there to help me remove the landscape fabric and rake over the rows and put down clover if it’s not too late. Lucky: she was there near the front shed, and we set a date.

—Harvesting the last of the ‘Mount Tacoma’ peony-flowering tulips (those in the photo are ‘Mondial’) and the ‘Sir Winston Churchill’ narcissus to take to the Merc tomorrow. Also watching the ‘Black Hero’ tulips, which are close to ready for harvest.

—Ordering tulips to plant this fall, probably from Onings in California. There have been shortages of bulbs, tubers and seed during the past year, with so much upheaval caused by the pandemic. I am not waiting.

—Ordering a big utility sink to put into the basement, half of which has become a well-laid out and climate-controlled workspace for both growing and design work.

—Sowing 14 different varieties of celosia (including some seed I saved), one of the most reliable crops ever. Some favorites: ‘Celway Terracotta’; Floret’s Pink Champagne Mix; ‘Cramer’s Lemon Lime’.

—Bringing in a couple more buckets of compost for seed sowing. I put this through a ¼-inch screen to remove small sticks and any debris. This sounds tedious, but it’s not. The compost is what we get free from the City of Lawrence. This year we hired a dump truck to bring it in. We have a materials yard west of the old shed, where we keep this and a mountain of wood mulch and a very large bin made of pallets for an unmanaged heap of brown compost (the dead stuff I pull from the garden).

—Trimming the heavily damaged clumps of Dutch dahlia tubers that arrived yesterday. This is typical; I trim off all the broken pieces (most are broken) and compost them. I take the remaining solid clumps and put them back into the bag they came in, but I cover them with vermiculite instead of leaving them naked so they won’t dry out any more than they did before they arrived. With some helpers, I’ll get them into the ground before May.

—Working on the last stages of spring clean-up of the perennial beds. I really need to do an all-over trim of the lavender plants; they are more productive if I do, with longer foliage and more flower stems. The variety I have is ‘Phenomenal’, and I have more coming this spring. I’m concerned I lost lavender plants in February’s polar vortex weather; I’m watching them.

—Putting up plant support netting. I don’t like using this plastic, but I will until Bob can make many more of the collapsible metal support frames he designed. All those I have are on the perennials or see aside for dahlias. I’ll use 40-inch stakes of rebar to hold the support netting taut over the annuals.

There are times of year, spring and fall, when I’m working on all seasons at once. It helps me appreciate winter more.