Garden Diary - May 4

The mint in the front bed has kept on growing - the rocks hardly slowed it down. Now I'm planning to put some cardboard under the rocks to 'smother' the mint. Crocuses and hyacinths are past blooming now, but tulips are at their peak. The forsythia bushes (both front and back) are still blooming in beautiful yellow. I was also happy to find that I have a few grape hyacinths, which are such a great blue. I finally mowed my front lawn, which was quite difficult on the hill (a combination of awkwardness with the push mower and excessively long grass, which I should have cut long before), which only makes me even more firmly resolved to eliminate the lawn in front!

In the back I am enlarging the beds, so that there'll be more room for plants (both flowers and vegetables). I dug up the old scalloped-edge concrete edging, and dug out bigger beds with large, flowing curves. I'll be smothering the grass and weeds here with cardboard as well, topped off with a layer of bark mulch. Behind the house the rhubarb is growing quickly, and daffodils are in bloom. Lilies of the valley are starking to poke through the dirt, but haven't yet unfurled. The clematis is already twining up the trellis.

At the side, the sage bush is putting out lots of new leaves, the gooseberries and raspberries are quite green, and the lilacs have buds (seems like there'll be a white lilac and a purple lilac; the shorter one was one of my mystery bushes). The remaining mystery bush has nice, shiny leaves. The hollyhocks that I transplanted seem to be hanging in, although they are far behind in growth compared to the hollyhocks that were already in place. The periwinkle that I transplanted to the big concrete tub seem to have taken root, although they aren't blooming like the rest that stayed in the ground (which can hardly be seen under the forsythia anyhow). I'm hoping to get plants to trail over and soften the edges of the tub, although I may move the periwinkle elsewhere, and put something edible (like tomatoes) in here.

I've put up a trellis along the side of the shed, where I plan on growing my purple pole beans. And, perhaps most gratifying, Mark has fixed my shed door (not shown here), which had been hanging from one hinge all winter. No more fears of being crushed while pulling out the gardening tools!