Spring around here is always a bit of a tease. March is a big unknown – quite often, it’s truly nasty with plenty of bone-chilling wind, rain, sleet, and the occasional snowfall, but interspersed are gorgeously clear days when you can shed your winter coat and soak up that elusive Seattle sunshine. I generally start planning my garden in March, and plant the early stuff (like lettuce) in April with most of my plants in the ground the first of May, when the soil is warm enough for seeds to germinate.
This year we had a mild winter and spring seems to be arriving a bit ahead of schedule. The robins and starlings are nesting, daffodils and cherry trees are blooming, and tulips are not far behind. Everything is budding, with peeps of green here and there brightening up the landscape, and we mowed our grass for the first time this year. It’s still very, very damp – don’t get me wrong, it’s far from summer – but I dare say we are firmly out of winter. I’m such a “glass half full” kind of person that I even broke my own no-planting-until-April rule and put some flowers into a hanging basket and in the window box on my soap room.
I know it’s not much to look at quite yet, but just having baskets planted in March is a big deal. This one has a geranium, a petunia, and two trailing plants; the window box has two fuchsias and a cyclamen. There are two pots on the front porch: one has a mum in it (bits of green right now!) and the other has a dwarf pomegranate (no fruit, flowers only). I’m thinking about putting the pomegranate into the ground somewhere and using that second pot for some bright and cheery begonias. The Girl has requested that we add a window box to her new room and I think it’s a great idea, especially since the rest of the yard is so overgrown; maybe some pretty flower boxes will distract people from looking too closely at all the other yard work that needs doing.
The Erratic Ramblings of an Extraordinarily Ordinary Person 