April Delights

I wish I had a video camera so I could take you on a virtual tour of our yard.  Everyday seems more spectacular.  Trees are leafing out, many things are budding.  Crab apple, redbud, dogwood, deciduous magnolias, and azaleas all blooming at once! 

We've just come inside from covering up plants.  The weather today is to be first crazy stormy and then the temps to plunge from 70 this afternoon to 29 degrees tonight.  Many things may be too tender to endure.  But we only have so much remay fabric.  We covered the strawberries, in full bloom, the potatoes newly sprouted and quite tender.  And the spring veggies and salad garden, probably could take it but very tender.

Yesterday in the sunshine:

 Taters on the right, beets, spinach and garlic in the middle, salad to the left

 Baby salad greens and peas on the trellis

It has been a strange spring weather wise and I guess this is the new normal in our days of climate change.  Lots of wild extremes and tough storms.  But plants just go on and do their thing.  We hope the blueberries will not be harmed, nor all the brand new leaves on trees, but there is nothing to be done but wait and see.

We did cover this little maple (to the left, yes, that is a dwarf tree), its been nipped in years past.  Always the Japanese maples seem to be among the first trees to leaf out.  Here you can see Davids big project from last weekend.  He moved this path that previously went to the left of the dogwood in the center of the frame past that little maple.  He so carefully moved everything around that you can hardly tell!

One last thing to share, this flowering cherry Hally Jolivette.  This has been its best season ever.  Right outside my office window the tree has gotten fuller with the dainty pink and white flowers everyday for two weeks and now is starting to wind down.  I imagine the cold nights will be the end of the flowers for this season.  But what a joy it's been.

It's Official

You might remember me saying one of my goals for 2013 was to complete my environmental educators certification.  And I did, actually back at the beginning of March, I finally finished, that means I completed 200 hours of classes, teaching and community service projects and finally, today, my documents arrived in the mail.  I'm kinda tickled about getting this done after 4 years of working on it, not sure what it will do for me exactly, but the experience did give me lots of great ideas for teaching EE and the opportunity to meet  many interesting and dedicated folks in the EE field. And there is that sense of accomplishment which isn't a bad thing when you're scattered in as many directions as I often am.

Some other highlights of the week:

• Baby bluebirds continue to chatter in the nest, I expect to see them fledge any day now
• Peas are blooming and there are tiny pods forming
• Peonies are in full bloom as a result of the high temperatures that finally came BOOM, from 70 on Tuesday to 90 today.
• Potatoes are blooming which means taters are forming under ground 
• Strawberries are coming in ripe and sweet
• And finally, another thing that's official.  I removed the last vestiges of the community garden from the Duke Energy site on James Street, a sad scene for me to see it end, but also, it was time and I'm very glad to be done with that project which was hard emotionally and physically.  Now I can concentrate 100% on the one community garden I am still managing. 

You know I can't help gushing about the peonies, so here are a couple of reasons why:

• the flowers and foliage are large and lush
• the petals are silky
• the fragrance can be spectacular; ginger, rose and citrus, all rolled into one
• the colors and flower variations are many

Gaze upon these and be a believer

Looks like a horseshoe wreath of flowers

Bowl of Beauty

Need I say more?  I wish you a good night!