Thursday, June 18, 2009

Spring's Rite




June is the most glorious month in the garden. It seems the whole garden is flush with blooms. Together May and June make for a gardening mad dash while you have more tasks than you can possibly complete. Selecting plants, preparing the soil, planting, weeding and mulching.

I love the idea of preparing the beds in the fall, but I could never dig up plants that may have one last bloom, just so I can enrich the soil for the next year. So instead I work around the tiny sprouts, trying to remember what I might have planted and what's just a weed.

Course all this activity makes it hard to choose writing a blog over planting, so now I'm trying to catch up a bit.

Last year I started foxglove from seed, nursing the seedlings until I could bring them outside. They're a biennial, so the first year they just grow their leaves and strengthen for the bloom the following year. Last year I just had leafy circles in my garden. This year, they're beautiful, big pink stalks that are blooming under my Spanish Andromeda and under this prickly bush with a name I forget. (Course that means it's also physically painful to cultivate them!) They should set seeds. I wonder if I'll get little seedlings this year which will bloom next year or if the seeds will overwinter and sprout next year.


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