Gertrude's Flower Garden Weekly Diary
3/31/00 - Nice early spring weather allowed me to do some outside work in Gertrude's garden this week. I ran the hand mower over the front and back lawns to cut the high spots since the grass grows unevenly in early spring. The hand mower is just right for this and less cumbersome to handle than my electric mower. I will use the hand mower all summer in the back garden where, as you will have noted from our many photographs, the narrow walks between the flower beds make the use of a power mower impractical.
I also began to "tidy up" the flower beds by trimming their edges, picking up winter debris, and breaking the crust of the soil a little. I began with the three small circle beds all of which are now colorful with tiny spring bulbs. The one in the front of the house is filled with lovely blue Siberian Squill (Scilla sibirica), the sundial bed with Striped Squill (Puschkinia libanotica), which is a pale blue, and the circle bed behind the garage with Glory-of-the-Snow (Chionodoxa luciliae), which is dark blue with a charming white "eye." These are all small bulbs that do not grow more than a few inches high, and have the desirable quality of spreading themselves by growing new bulbs or seeds.
In the basement garden, seeding and transplanting to flats is almost completed. A friend sent me an envelope of seeds of a flower new to me--these will be my final planting, and if they germinate successfully I will report on them. I can never tell about seeds sent to me from gardens in other parts of the country; sometimes they don't germinate and other times they come up like "gang-busters." The sunflowers and hyacinth bean plants are now on my steps. My Connecticut daughter was here this weekend, and took home with her some of my extra seedlings.
I have often mentioned the outside cellar steps over which I have placed a plastic covered wooden frame. This enables me to open the metal doors in the daytime and let the flats of plants that I have placed on the steps enjoy the daylight. At night, I close the outside doors; the inside cellar door is always open to keep the plants warm. This system seems to work well, hardening and strengthening the plants, some of which are now blooming, as you can see from our weekly picture below.
4/07/00 - Gertrude's Flower Garden Weekly Diary
3/24/00 - Gertrude's Flower Garden Weekly Diary
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