FIRST FLOWERS OF SPRING!!! Post your pics!! April Edition :)

LOL Ecnalg--well, those azaleas and the daffodils more than make up for it! :-)

Gita, my Endless Summer hydrangea is also regenerating from the base.

yes, speaking of hydrangeas, Strawberries and Cream has sprouts at the base. Another larger Noid one on a north side, has buds all up most stems- hardy sucker! I got it from the first swap at Ric and Holly's, and forgot and never have figured out, who gave it to me.

Nice pics Greenthumb! I'm glad someone else likes Mahonia bealei besides me. Yours looks to have fared quite well over the winter. Mine has burgundy colored leaves on the top, luckily they didn't brown out though. Ours is about 4' tall.

Isn't Mahonia bealsi invasive?

Not sure which Mahonia we have, but it has behaved here so far.

Technically it is listed as an invasive in some areas. Birds love the berries. It hasn't been invasive in our yard since I planted it 4 years ago.

Went out to take a picture----NICE cool, sunny morning....

I have a busy day planned...hope I get to some of it done...
There's lots of heavy stuff that needs to be done before next hursday--
as I will not be able to do much of anything for two weeks after that.
Having Carpal Tunnel surgery on my right hand on 4-17.
Two weeks of NO lifting more than 2lbs --hand all bandaged up....
Bad time of year to have to put up with it..However--.just 2 weeks and then it will
be OK to do anything I want... will have to use my left hand a lot--it will get a work-out...

I won't take any time off from work because of this--judt will be pon "light duty"...
May use this time to catch up on my training classes...I am VERY behind!

--Today--I want to put down pre-emergent on my front lawn (only)
--I definitely will try to cut back my 2 Junipers--will use an electric Hedge trimmer,
as much as I hate the "clipped look"--but I cannot do it by hand any more--one branch
at a time--as I have always done...so it does not look like it has been trimmed...
--It would be nice if i could dig up my raised bed---but that will be a monster effort.
Tree roots in every inch to yank out,,,Will try...my put it off ...
--Bought several Dill and Parsley plants from Bonnies tables at the HD.
Sale still on until 4/13 . $5 for $10 Reg. $3.68 each. Need to plant those too...
Go to your HD and take a look...these are really good deals...

Here's my cut back Endless Summer Hydrangea--and my S. bed full of Daffs.
I dug up a lot of them last year when i was digging in there moving the Iris around.
Just gave away a lot of the bulbs...
G.

I believe the invaseness of it comes from the birds eating the berries and then spreading them to the four corners of the earth.

I remember reading a DG article about it...come on brain.

I could understand if we butted up to a woodland but we're in the middle of suburbia bordering cornfields so I don't think it would be a problem for ours.

Mahonia bealei is non-native and on undesirable invasive plant lists. I had some until I yanked it up not because of the invasive potential, but because I didn't think its leaves and form went well with the shrubs already growing in the bed. The combination wasn't pleasing to my eyes : )

A neighbor bordering on our homeowners' association forest has M. bealei, but I haven't seen any escapees. I've only seen a few growing in one area in Fairfax County parkland, but it's no where near as invasive as burning bush and Japanese honeysuckle.

Some smart person wrote about Mahonia for DG
http://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/view/2097/
and she even included a link to invasives.org about M. bealei

Ha ha sally - that author sure is smart :)

A few weeks back, typ was talking about the beautiful snowdrops that she saw when driving by a run down house, and she actually stopped to get pictures. I mentioned the daffodils that bloom around an old house on our easement that is nothing but rubble now. I finally took pictures this afternoon. The house was one room on a stacked stone foundation. When we bought the property back in 1988, the woman who had lived in it was in her 80s. The house had been rubble for a long time and she was living in a trailer about 100' from it. My parents eventually bought the property, which adjoins ours, from her family in the late 1990s.

If you look closely, you can see the remnants of the stone foundation in photo 1 and the driveway to my property off to the right in photo 4.

This message was edited Apr 10, 2014 11:00 PM

That is lovely, Aspen--thanks for sharing!

Hahaha--such smart authors we have! :-)

So sweet, Aspen. I feel like having a picnic there. I love the picture with the dog! :)

I guess you could call Riley my "dog-in-law". He is a rescue cocker spaniel and has been living at the house full time since my brother-in-law Lowell came last May. His fiancé Suzanne lives in Silver Springs during the work week and comes out here on the weekends. The dog is hers. He must have been really abused because he is so scared of people, mostly men. He rarely warms up to anyone, but Lowell, Suzanne, and I are his comfort family. Even after a year, he still shies away from Mike. He absolutely loves it out here in the woods though - never needs to be on a leash. His favorite things are to eat vegetables, play ball, and root around in the dirt sniffing out who knows what - dirty nose, paws flinging dirt, and the huffing that accompanies it cracks me up.

aw Terri, that is so cute

Terri--

Love the abandoned look of the old woods in your pictures....very mysterious..

When i was young--I used to wander off into the nearby woods and play pretend..
I would find an old tree with gnarled roots and sit there making pretend walkways
and homes in the holes and recesses of the roots. No longer know WHO all these
homes were for...I think it was just all my imagination.. and--there's nothing
wrong with that...I think I just felt very alone back then and loved my alone times.
In the hard, post war years fantasizing and pretend were my refuge.

Your photos of the woods and the abandoned house foundation brought those
memories back to me.....thanks! G.

Smart authors, indeed!!

Childhood memories are wonderful, Gita!

Love the pics, aspenhill. I need to get up to the farm and find the daffs I planted in the woods in the memorial grove dedicated to my folks. The farm where my dad worked is now part of the township property and is to remain a park.

We've been taking roll call also during these wonderful sunny days! The daffodils are just glorious. Love the woodland daffs in Terri's photos, too!

Here are N 'Curly' and N. 'February Gold' (in the "alpha border"), spring sprouts on a Salvia macrophylla, and little offsets from 'Pacific Blazing Star' -- the mama "hen" didn't make it through the winter, but these little "chicks" sure are fabulous!

Terp, the baby Girard's azalea you gave me made it through the winter... I lost some of the "sale" rhodi's that had to stay in pots over their winter, but I'm delighted to see buds on a couple of special deciduous azaleas... all in all, lots more survivors than I expected when I had to leave so much unplanted in fall.

Gita, no green yet on the lovely little 'Endless Summer' hydrangea from you, but my other hydrangeas are just barely showing some green tips, so I'm hopeful! As you noted, many plants, shrubs even, died back to the ground but are putting up new shoots. :-)

Terp's "baby," nestled into a larger shrub pot.

Crazy, I was checking out our knockout roses yesterday and noticed that on the one, most of the branches have died down to the ground. I figure that won't happen all the time but maybe just because I planted them last season.

Brutal, yes, it was, that... not only the cold, but all that wind! I did manage to group a lot of my potted shrubs together with some burlap around them, so that helped a bit, although I'm sure they would rather have been in the ground (except that azalea baby, which would have been mowed down by bunnies).

hahaha. I just got done telling about my 'Pauls Baby' azalea on the Yardening thread. It looks great, it was up against a north wall, so I guess the wall location cut the wind. I didn't notice any dieback.

Seq, that's too bad about the knockouts. I thought they were really hardy. Are you seeing new growth now?

I think I've *once again* killed the amsonia hubrichtii! How is your amsonias looking? Anyone seeing new growth on them? This might be the universe telling me that this does not belong in my garden. :(

I'm going to have blueberries, candytuft, phlox, daffodils, triliums, and the redbud all blooming in about 3 days.

Yeah SSG there is new growth coming out. I'm not really worried about them.

Here is the first bloom of a NOID hellebore. Maybe you guys could help me with the name. It didn't bloom last year, I guess it was too young.

For some reason I can't upload a picture to DG from my Iphone. I don't understand.

My Amsonia hubrichtii started to send up new growth today. I've been watching it because I was afraid I killed it by overwintering it in pots sunk in the ground in holes that didn't allow for much drainage. I had visions of root rot.
Maybe there's hope for yours, SSG!

Muddy and SSG, I just transplanted my amsonia hubrichtii to a more suitable bed and noticed that it had tiny growth at the very base. I wouldn't have noticed it if I hadn't moved it--from the surface it just looked lifeless. So, I hope your amsonia shows some life for you soon. What kind of light/moisture does it get where it is?

I left the amsonia in their pots last winter. They're supposedly hardy to zone 5 so I thought they'd be okay, but they look so... crispy right now. They get a ton of sun and only rain right now.

Seq, that's a gorgeous hellebore!

Yes, it is a beautiful hellebore! I'm afraid my hellebore didn't do well--I think it was not in the right spot. I have moved it now and hopefully it will survive and do better next year.

SSG, I had my amsonia in a super sunny spot last year and it didn't seem to do all that well. Then I noticed that MOBOT says:
"Easily grown in average, medium, well-drained soil in full sun to part shade. Best fall foliage color usually occurs in full sun, but flowers generally last longer if given some afternoon shade in hot sun areas. Stems tend to open up and flop in too much shade, however. Consider cutting back the stems by about 6" after flowering to help keep stems upright and to shape plants into a nice foliage mound."

So it's kind of iffy about full sun versus part sun, so I decided to move it to a part sun spot. We'll see how it does this season...

My re-planted (late last year) Tahiti Daffs all have buds on them....
Still planted them in a circle--like they were--around the WS shrub
which now resides in Paul's garden.

That focal spot will need something flashy in it....Maybe i will plant my little "Maya"
Brug there...? It is still small, but may grow bigger in this nice bed.

Otherwise--I will plant a couple purple daturas in there...

On a BUMMER note----ALL the buds on my Bob Hope Camellia are dry
as a result of the hard frosts we had. No blooms this year!

G.

Sorry to hear about the camellia, Gita. It sure is a beauty!

Can you help me understand about the buds? My Camellia 'Yuletide' has dried buds on it too but I assumed they were just withered remains from the bloom last fall. Do they usually set buds this early?

My Camellia sets buds in the fall--or sooner. They are there all winter
and as the weather warms--they get fatter and fatter until they bloom.
Mine normally blooms in April into May . Not this year, though.

There are many types of Camellias and they have many different blooming times.
Some bloom in the winter--some in the summer.

"Buds" would never remain on the shrub after blooming...When a bloom is finished,
it falls off clean from the stem. Nothing left behind.
Yours may have frozen too....

I can only talk about MY Camellia and how it behaves....

Picture of fallen off blooms...

thanks, Gita. I think that when I brought my camellia home I planted it in a spot where it didn't get quite enough sun. The buds that were on it never really opened fully. I think that's what I'm seeing now. :-( I've moved it now to a spot where it gets a little more sun. The same thing happened with my ajania-- seemed like the buds never quite opened, so now I'm going to move it.

I hear such conflicting things about this camellia--at the nursery they said 'full sun' but everything I read seems to suggest morning sun/dappled shade. It was in part sun before; now it's in morning sun/dappled shade. We'll see how it does!!

Cat...
Do you feel that your Camellia is in a different category of some kind?
As you said--"It did not get enough sun"... ???
There are different Camellias that MAY have different requirements.
I have never really looked into it...I have only had THIS Camellia--and no others.

Also--I don't think it would be unusual that a newly purchased camellia--in bud--would
not flower as expected--and some of the buds may never open or fall of...
Think of all the changes this poor plant went through just to arrive at the Nursery
you bought it from? Then YOU planted it--disturbing the roots somewhat.
Maybe a second year, in the spot you first planted it, may have been OK.
Now you moved it again--so maybe it is just reacting to that .

However--looking into it--as I do when I get something new--seems that GENERAL advice
was that camellias like shade/part shade and protection from strong winds.
My Camellia sits right next to my front steps. I have a rather wide concrete landing.
On one side of my front entrance is an old Yew--and on the other (NW side) there
is a tall Hemlock shrub
Of course--behind it is my house. These provide ample protection from all sides.

It gets bright shade--and a tint bit of AM sun on the lower part as it passes over.

I'll look for a picture of my house where it shows this location.

GOOD! Here's the one I just took after trimming my Junipers...

Look to the left of the front entrance. See that shrubby shrub? That is my camellia.

Hope this helps you some....Gotta run! Gita

LOL Gita, no I don't think my camellia is in a 'different category of some kind'. It's just that at the nursery and on the tag it said 'full sun'. But when I looked it up online, it said morning sun or part sun. I tried it out in a part sun spot, but I'm not sure how much sun it actually got and then it didn't really flower. But that's a good point that that may have been the stress of transplanting. At any rate, MoBot says morning sun/dappled shade, so that's what I'm trying now.

Cat, there is an entire garden full of camellias at the National Arboretum.
http://www.usna.usda.gov/Gardens/faqs/Camellia.html
You should check them out. I think that they are in dappled shade there. When we went 2 years ago, it was around this time of year and they were blooming. The later cherries trees there were blooming too. It is a sight to behold! I can't believe it's been 2 years since I've been to the Arboretum....

Here's another interesting camellia article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/17/garden/camellias-ready-for-a-cold-snap.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Oh to add, my grandmother has two enormous camellias in front of her east-facing house, full sun but protected in the afternoon heat. They look totally fried this year. Looks like a lot of windburn. I didn't notice how the buds looked. She always complains that the squirrels bite the buds off. I think camellias are beautiful when they bloom, and even pretty nice when not blooming. But the sheer disappointment of late frosts and cold winters are too much to make me want to grow one. :(

This message was edited Apr 12, 2014 1:38 PM

Thanks TYP a trip to the arboretum would be lovely someday. Maybe a MAF field trip?

Thanks also for your thoughts on camellias. Morning/dappled shade is feeling right to me. I just checked on mine and it has some new leaf buds showing so I think it likes its new spot

You were right, Muddy and Catmint!

I have new growth on the Amsonia! Yay!

The redbud's just about to pop. So exciting!