Happy spring gardeners!

I'm back in the blogosphere !

We've had a wonderful North Dakota spring .... little to no flooding and no SNOW in April so far. The grass is green and the perennials are starting to poke their heads out of the dirt. It instantly is a mood lifter.

The highlight of my winter was attending a gardening seminar of the Renegade Gardener Don Engebretson of Minnesota. What a treat it was to hear him in person. I have been reading his blog for the last few years and love his irreverent and no-nonsense approach to gardening and landscaping. He gave us great ideas for container plantings that I am sure to incorporate this summer.

I also have reassessed my garden and have decided to (gasp!) scale back. Of course, I say that now, and by June I'll be back daydreaming about expanding another bed. Why scale back? For lack of a more eloquent answer ... I bit off more than I could chew. By the end of last summer, I was tired of having so many different planting areas and trying too many things. I felt my landscape lacked "oomph". I had too much of too many different things. In other words, it just ain't workin' for me anymore.

It would be differently, surely, if I only worked part-time, and I would have more time to experiment and hand-hold my garden beds. But it just won't happen. I will make the first of many trips to the local hardware store and purchase grass seed and fill in areas that didn't work.

Somewhere, my husband is shaking his head and saying, "I told you so."

Sigh.

One of my new favorite flowers

I've fallen in love with columbine. Not just any columbine - the Clementine variety.

I selected the columbine "Clementine Rose" on a whim last year from my favorite perennial stop - the Plant Ranch. There had to be 10-12 different columbines to choose from on the clearance sale and for some reason I choose this one. What a beauty she has turned out to be. It is so nice that I went back to the Plant Ranch this week and bought every Clementine variety I could find - blue, white, red and the salmon rose. I loved their compact shape and the petite blooms.

Right now, my garden lacks color. It hasn't helped that we've had a cold spring. We had rain over the weekend and that was a definite boost - now we just need warmth!

This is about the only other thing blooming - the chives. But they sure look good! I planted a lot of purple and pink this year. I wanted that soft look in my beds this year.

This past weekend my son graduated from high school. What a whirlwind week. Hubby and I worked hard to make the yard and garden as glorious as it could be for all of our open house guests. We thought it looked great and hopefully our friends and family did too. And because it was our open house - we didn't do anything drastic with that silly juniper yet!

Hopefully I'll have more things blooming in my next post ...

Sow what now?

OK all you gardeners ....

Is it too late to start seeds indoors? When I had wanted to start seeds indoors it was the height of the flood. Now I'm about 3 weeks behind and wondering if it's even worth it.

Typically, it's not safe to plant seeds (or any potted plants) until AT LEAST Mother's Day around here (Chris from ND can vouch for this). Some years, it's not safe until Memorial Day. Even if I started the seeds for 4-5 weeks, is the seedling going to be strong enough to survive the spring transplant?

I wanted to start cosmos, bush morning glory and maybe even my cleome. I don't have a sophisticated set-up for my seeds indoors - just lots of sunlight in a south exposure window.

What do you think ... wait and just sow the seeds in mid-May or get a headstart now and take my chances with some grown indoors for a few weeks? Help!

Happy spring!

These beautiful green buds from a Siberian Iris was a welcome visitor this Easter Sunday. After nearly six hard months of winter, this was a lovely sight.

Temps are in the 50s for the next few days and much of the snow has melted - all but the front of my house which faces north and still has lots of compacted snow. So today, I got out the shovel and moved the snow around to sunnier locations. I'm sure my neighbors were wondering what the hell I was doing shoveling the grass and garden beds. I'm just getting a jump start on gardening people!

I was out with Mommy's Little Helper who watched me shovel while she skated around in her new inline skates she received for her birthday. It was a great morning to be outside - the sun was shining, the sun was clear and it instantly uplifted my spirits. I was surprised to see a Red Cross truck driving around our neighborhood again - I'm sure they were checking to see if there were any people working on our dike and were offering beverages and treats. How nice of them to come by on Easter ...

Anyway, here's some of the things I found underneath all that snow ....

This is one of my geraniums.

I believe this is a pink columbine?!?!!? Regrettably, I did not mark my plants last fall and I planted SO MANY new things and now I am lost as to what and where I planted. This is atypical of me and I am so frustrated! I think back to September when I would normally do this and I was so sick with my gallbladder. So that's probably why I neglected this garden chore. Oh well - it does add an element of surprise to spring ...

I haven't had much experience with grasses. This is one of my prairie grasses and not sure - do I cut this down even more. Do I wait for new growth to come and then do away with this?