Mr. Vintage Man

Spring of 2022 is now in the history books, for today is the first day of summer. I’ve decided to welcome the arrival of summer by taking a look back at the show the garden put on over the spring months.

What a show it was!

But before we get to the pictures of the show, please bear with me as I post a few rambling observations of said garden.

Death in the garden

Plants, like all living organisms, sometimes die. Some die from old age, some die from disease, and some die for no apparent reason at all. C’est la vie.

Winter can sometimes be especially brutal on the garden.

Here along Colorado’s Front Range, we had slightly weirder than usual weather during autumn & winter. Autumn was very warm and dry, a pattern that continued well into December. I was seriously worried that we wouldn’t get any snow at all. Then January arrived, and we got hit by snow every 8 days or less for two months straight!

Taking that into consideration, I am fairly pleased at how few plants of my plants perished over the colder months. By my tally I only lost two ornamental grasses, one butterfly weed (not really a weed), several blanket flowers, and one ‘Ironweed’. The last one doesn’t surprise me much. I planted it in mid-autumn, and I don’t think it had a chance to get established in time for the cold weather.

At one with nature.

A pair of robins had a nest somewhere in or near the VintageGarden. I never actually saw the nest or the chicks, but I know there was one nearby because the parents were extremely aggressive, almost suicidal, at chasing away possible threats.

I watched them swoop and dive at a hawk and until it finally flew away. A cat in my neighborhood likes to perch on my fence so it can survey its kingdom. These robins relentlessly divebombed it until it slunk away in shame.

Plus, they were pure hell on the squirrels, which amused MrsVintage and I to no end.

Yet they never attacked me once. Were they able somehow to sense my benevolence? I would be out in the yard watering or pulling weeds, and they completely ignored me. I would lounge in my hammock or in a chair on the patio, and the robins would get surprisingly close to me. Not pigeons eating popcorn at my feet close, but they would sometimes get to within 10 feet of me.

Not an earth-shattering observation. I just thought it was interesting.

On with the show

Today may be the first official day of summer, but here at the Vintage domicile, the temperatures have been in mid-summer mode for the past three weeks. You might be thinking that the early onset of hot temperatures must’ve diminished the garden display, but you would be wrong. The spring garden was a smash hit!

Plant sick bay

Speaking of rescuing, two of my shrubs were nearly destroyed by rabbits last year. I put hardware cloth around both shrubs in early spring this year, and so far it looks like they may stage a comeback.

The two tubes of hardware cloth are a little distracting, but what can you do? Rodents are going to…rodent, I guess. I will probably keep the hardware cloth around them all the way until next spring. Hopefully by then the shrubs will have grown large enough so that the damn rabbits won’t bother them anymore.

Spring is returning to my area in fits and starts. Which is of course not unusual. The transition between the seasons is always unpredictable. The transition from winter to spring seems to always have the biggest swings. Cold one day, warm the next, then a deep freeze.

The winds here have been unrelenting. Weeks of gales that have made everybody cranky. I exaggerate a little, but this has been one of the windiest springs I can recall. Steady winds from 15 to 35 miles an hour, with gusts up to 60 mph, for days on end.

I am not very inclined to work in such weather.

Springtime chores

On the days when the winds aren’t howling, and the temperatures have been pleasant, I have been able to get some of my springtime chores accomplished. I’ve cleaned up all the garden beds, gotten the lawn aerated, and put fertilizer down on the grass.

I’ve also pruned back several shrubs, including my ‘Blue Mist Spirea’s’. I really like Blue Mist Spirea. Their deep blue flowers provide a splash cool color in the late summer garden. Some years, if the weather cooperates, their leaves can even put on a decent show in autumn. Added bonus, they are drought tolerant.

But they do require an annual haircut in the spring.

Below is the “before” picture of one of my Spiraeas. Quite a mess, am I right?

Blue Mist Spiraeas are one of those shrubs that typically die back partway over the winter. In really hard winters, they can die back all the way to the ground. So, it is a good idea to prune them back in early spring, at least down to where there are buds showing. Not just for aesthetics, but because this shrub sets its blooms on new wood.

In the picture below, the red arrows are pointing at a couple of emerging buds to give you an idea of what they look like.

I took my secateurs (we Americans call them garden pruners, but the British call them ‘secateurs’ and I really like that word. So fancy!) and went to town. Below is the after picture. My Blue Mist Spirea is now ready for the growing seasons ahead.

Aerifying the borders

Another project I’ve undertaken this spring is aerifying the borders. Aerifying is a fancy way of saying “sticking a turning fork in the ground and wiggling it back and forth”. I’m doing this to uncompact the soil.

Is this necessary? Absolutely not. But the soil in the Vintage yard is fairly heavy clay. In fact, the area I live in has earned the sobriquet “Bentonite Manors”. Bentonite is a type of clay. Clay has its positives; for one, it holds moisture really well. A useful characteristic when one is trying to grow drought tolerant plants.

On the other hand, one of clay’s biggest downsides is that it can get easily compacted. Which prevents air and moisture from penetrate down to where the roots can access it. Not good.

Snow is very heavy, and parts of the garden were under a layer of snow for several months. Perfect condition to create compaction issues. While earthworms and other soil fauna will eventually loosen up the soil, I figure aerifying can’t hurt and may even help speed the natural process along.

You want to do this in spring, however. Temperatures are cooler then, and the rain is usually more plentiful. If you aerify the soil in summer, you risk having the heat and low humidity dry out the soil at the root level, which is a surefire way of killing your plants.

This is also why you only aerate the lawn in early spring or mid-to-late autumn.

A stranger appears

While doing some of my chores, I spotted a lone stranger in the garden.

A single, yellow crocus smack dab in the middle of the long border. I know I didn’t plant it. Where did it come from? How did it get there? A mystery that likely will never be solved.

I do have some purple crocuses nearby, but these bulbs are at least 10 feet away from the new guy. Plus, as I just mentioned, they’re purple and definitely not yellow.

Well, as Dr. Ian Malcom says, life finds a way.

Artic blast cancels the show

Finally, I’m a bit bummed out. I’ve been planting ‘Lemon Queen’ daffodils in the former veggie garden for the past couple of years. Last year’s display was quite good.

This year, the show has already been cancelled.

The buds of the flowers were just getting ready to bloom when we got hit by an unseasonably cold arctic blast. Temps at the Vintage home hit 15 degrees. Those cold temps froze the moisture in the buds, creating ice crystals. Those crystals literally tore up the plant tissue.

Which means no flower display from ‘Lemon Queen” daffodils this year.

Fortunately, the plants themselves will be fine. I’ll plant a few more in the autumn and hopefully, if next year’s the weather cooperates, the ‘Lemon Queen’ daffodils will put on a fine show.