Deanna - down in Baxter County AR I always figured April 10th to be the apex of dogwood season, and sometimes it would get warm to early and the green leaves would hide the white bracts. Are you in dogwood country? I am sure this year will be a bummer for those who love to be greeted to spring by woods full of those little beauties.

Oh yes; forsythia is in bloom here in northcentral IL also with what I have know as tulip bushes A(probablly the wrong name). I have a short red flowered lilium that emerges a little earlier than most of my asiatics and orientals, and it is up already.

I have to control myself. Yesterday I found myself eyeing my overwintered stock of canna roots and almost yelled out loud "STOP YOURSELF".

Les

Looking forward to 7 more months of mowing. NOT!!!

===>> then dont fertilize your lawn .. crimminey .. lol ...

ken

Les,
Would you be thinking about Magnolias? They are sometimes called Tulip Trees.

Frank

Franknjim, yeah, I was thinking Japanese magnolias. Ours here in Mobile were early bloomers, mine a tiny one had only one blossom, but my neighbor-lady old gardening veteran had three which were gorgeous. Bush? They are the size of nice dogwoods and Japanese maple trees here.

In this picture, taken early in January this year, note in the background is a big Meyer lemon. It is tall enough that she cannot reach the big lemons at the top of the tree, and those were frozen in the only cold weather we had this season. She gave us a 5 foot tall blooming seedling from this tree. Very hardy.

Also note that the water droplets hanging on the branches reveal we had very dense fog the previous night/early morning. And in the lower left, note the young greens of her turnip greens,above the daylilies, a southern winter garden crop.

"Looking forward to 7 more months of mowing. NOT!!!"

We diminish our area to mow by more and more each year. It is our goal to eventually not have ANY grass to mow. It never does well with all this shade anyway. But then, we only have 1/3 acre...I don't know how big your space is.
Karen

I have several hostas poking up, and I keep telling them it's too early, but they don't listen. They just keep popping up anyway. We are, without a doubt, a month ahead. Some areas of my lawn need mowing, others are still turning green and half of the back yard is still underwater from the torrential downpours we got Thursday night (but oh, was the lightning show spectacular!).

Karen

That front you had in Ohio is almost here. It's supposed to have high winds and hail along with torrential rains. They say it's very slow moving. I stuck all my hosta in the shed that I couldn't cover with a pot. I'm hoping I don't get a repeat of last year's hail damage to my hosta.

It's been really early this year. The only pots that haven't budded/leafed out are Paradigm, September Sun, Paul's Glory and Wide Brim. The daffodils have come and gone. The tulips are finishing, as are the cemetery iris. The tall bearded ones are coming on now. My neighbor has the tallest, prettiest, huge, white iris you've ever seen in bloom right now. This storm should do that one in. It will be on the ground in the morning.

Ahhh...the joys of gardening.

bkay

I hadn't realized that line of storms was heading down that way! Yes, it was very slow moving for sure. My yard was completely underwater when I woke at 2am Friday morning to see what the damage was. It had drained just a little by 9am, and by 3pm, after the city decided to open up the storm drains, most of the water was gone. Now there is some standing water, and that will only go away with evaporation. The ground can't hold anymore water.

Karen

Wow, Karen, I haven't been watching the news the last few days so I had no idea your area was nearly to the rowboat stage!

Ken, my dog fertilizes my yard for me. However, my next door neighbor's yard grows quite well without him doing anything whatsoever, with the exception of a mowing 2 or 3 times a year. It's quite a cause for celebration in the neighborhood when he does a mowing. My flower bed along the fence on his side is a constant battle against weeds since his weeds are tall and freely seeding everywhere.

Les, one of my neighbors has cannas that she leaves in the ground year round, and unbelievably, they survive. But then, they're planted up against the foundation on the south side of the house, and she mulches them really well in the winter, so I guess they have a little micro-zone there. My neighbor's dogwood isn't flowering yet, so it's safe for now. I'm surprised because in the past week, many of the spring flowering trees around here seem to have "sprung."

Karen, my yard isn't that big, and a lot of it is garden beds, but I still hate mowing. Especially when it's 90-100 degrees!!! The front is shady, so in the heat of summer it only needs mowing once every 2 or 3 weeks. But my backyard is sunny and my dog fertilizes it year round, so it grows really well. In fact, it could probably use a mowing twice a week during the spring when we get plenty of rain, but I don't have time to mess around with it twice weekly.

Deanna

Funny thing is, areas around our city got only a little more than an inch of rain, but in my city we got up to five inches of rain. Some of the neighbors yards are still ponds, the water has nowhere to go. I saw some pump the water from their yards into the storm drains, others have done nothing. I'm really tired of all of this rain. Last year I was waiting for the drought we usually get by July but it never happened, which was good, I had to hardly water at all. In the spring it's annoying. Can't mow the backyard until the ground dries enough to get the mower out there and by then the grass is nearly two feet tall. Might as well grow a meadow in the backyard. :)

Karen

Lawn is absolutely too much trouble IMHO.
It doesn't like too much shade, it doesn't like too much sun without being watered all the time, it develops pests, and the whole block needs to be cut at the same time to look neat.
Well, I've minimized the amount of grass in the front lawn with a half-moon bed in the arc of the circular driveway, then planting strips down both property lines. Oh yeah, and planted along the privacy fence and its arbor. Not much left to cut, thank heaven. The back garden has two rectangular areas north and south of the house, one is mine for the New Orleans courtyard garden, with about half of it covered by old bricks and patio stones, then a nice bed against the fence. My back forty, the new section of our garden, will not have any lawn to cut, because I want it covered in ophiopigon (monkey grass) what is not planted in hosta and other things, that is. It is where we have three pecan trees, deciduous and leafed out from about May through October. The back forty is the only spot I'd trust to host my hosta plants. Now, I'm thinking of installing a well back there. An irrigation meter is more economical than a straight city water meter, but a well here is not hard to install. Less than 100 feet to dependable water source.

I got a note from Hornbeak yesterday that they have speeded up their first shipping date and I'm sure it is due to the early growth and attendant heat. So instead of a week in April, my order is shipping next Monday, last week in March.
I'm glad they can be flexible or responsive to the circumstances.

It makes me think of the old song, "What a difference a day makes, 24 little hours, and the sun and the flowers, where there used to be rain......" Or maybe snow.

I got an e-mail from Chris at Hallson Gardens yesterday asking if I was ready for some hostas. He's digging earlier than usual. Hoooray. Boy, am I ever ready.

-Babka

As soon as I get paid this week I'm putting in my first hosta order of the year with Hallson's. I'm going to replace my pathetic Spartacus and get Key Lime Pie. I'd get more but I'm restraining myself from buying very many plants this year. Hopefully he'll still have Spartacus by the time I get paid. My luck is it'll sell out just before.

Karen