What have you done today in the Garden?

You'll rue the day it feels like South Georgia in summer, in the USA !! .

 

The usual…mow mow mow…. The pastures and the front and back lawn, as well as took a bunch of stuff to the barn.

 

Gravenstein apple tree beginning to bloom. It's the earliest of my varieties. I grafted this tree on a super-dwarfing rootstock, Budagovsky-9, about nine years ago. bIt's about 5 feet tall.



It needs a pollinator variety that's also early. This columnar tree, "Tasty Red", is almost blooming and will overlap the Gravenstein.



I'm excited the garlic looks so good already.



Alpine strawberries blooming. I only recently separated the plants and repotted them.



The alpines are ahead of the Ozark Bearty everbearings.

I planted lettuce plants.



Also snow peas. I became discouraged over thenyears about how, wheneverI plant them, jays get through whatever protection I give and steal every plant. So I bought some larger ones to see what happens. I'll cover them with plastic cloches at night .



The Chinese chives are ready for harvest. There are jioazi dumplings in my future, soon.



The onions look really nice now.



Mini-dahlia seedlings.



Some of the tomato seedlings, under LEDs.



An Erythronium.



I also planted a row of broccoli, some turnip seedlings, and some daikon seedlings (no photo).

 

Apart from patio and path re-pointing, I'm pretty much up to date. I need to get another bag of cement and some sharp sand, before I can do any more.
I jet-washed the main patio a couple of months back but some of the pointing has gone green again, so I'll give it another go of "Wet n' Forget."

We're finally getting a bit of colour. This "Amber" clematis I bought from Taylors a few years ago. It was relatively expensive, but never disappoints. It fills the whole of this part of the fence next to the kitchen window.




It has these bell-like yellow flowers.





The ever faithful Mayleen is the first to flower of many.





The wisterias are nearly in bloom. We've seven, but they don't all come out at the same time. This part catches the early sun. The wires you can see are to prevent the huge wood pigeons sitting on the fence.
That huge branch travels from the corner of the little bed at the side of the garage, right round and over the pergola on the back of the house.





These are the first of the many azaleas.





I'm quite pleased with the way the lawn has recovered, except for the bit in constant shadow which is always a problem. It'll need some more moss treatment and during the next spell of some consecutive dry days, I'll scarify it again. But it won't fully recover until mid-summer.






My new turf is holding up well, despite the attention of a couple of squirrels who try to dig little holes in it. A couple of joins are visible, but any little clumps of grass I find growing in the borders I transplant into them, as they'll grow anywhere.










Whatever it is, in this border, is doing exceptionally well along the full length.

 

I took the "training wires" off this acer palmatum this morning.
The leaves aren't fully out, when they are, the top branches will dip a bit.
But there's now a more even distribution of the branches around the trunk.

I mowed the lawn, including the new turf under it. I was very careful, as it's possible to disturb it if you aren't.



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