How beautiful. I enjoyed reading about your garden day so much.

I love this time of year myself where , like you, I'm able to get out there and get stuff done, because once the heat sets in, I'm pretty much done! I've never had to deal with working on s slope though, best of luck with it!

April, hurray! Pam of the magnificent roses gardens on a slope as well, but she hasn't posted for a while as far as I know. It certainly brings challenges, one of the chief ones being that my tool bucket keeps falling over. Pruning tall plants can be challenging.

My helper came yesterday and we set him to cutting the grass, first time this year. After lunch I went down and strolled through the garden, snipping off dead or unhealthy growth on the roses here and there. The garden and I are beginning to recover from 2017's drought. It was pleasant to look around and not be horrified by what I saw. As usual I feel the need for more plants. We planted very little last fall, being still insecure about the water supply, and now I have two year's worth of desire to get things in the ground to satisfy, though it will have to wait until October. This is a bit of a lull period: bulbs and early flowering shrubs are the chief beauties now and I don't have much of either in the big garden. One can only plant so many forsythias before they begin to lose effect. In a few weeks we'll have peonies, wisteria, lilacs (what the deer leave us), and roses.

Yesterday I weeded, cut out dead leaves from last year (for the final time I hope), planted pansies and spread a germicide on the old gravel patio. Every Spring is a shock to a body that has been relatively inactive all Winter. I do believe I have never been as tired before in my entire life. Last night it rained. What a snug feeling it is to know the garden has been readied to receive it. The second wave of white narcissus is blooming in bountiful clumps through the wood garden, Queen of the North, Misty Glen and Stainless while narcissus Thalia, snowflake Gravetye Beauty and tulip Purissima decorate the patio garden which is partially enclosed by Taxus heckrotii. The first wave of narcissus, scattered in the woods and rose garden, was mostly Ice Follies, a great naturaliser and a very tough forgiving plant.

I, too, garden on a steep slope which is where the Rose Garden is but yesterday the work was on level ground.

The roses are beginning to show a few leaves at ground level and the peony shoots have been above ground for a week or two. Spring is so fresh and so many beautiful greens.

Cath

Melissa, thank you for posting about your spring garden.

I have muscari that I planted over 12 years ago, still returns each spring, a hardy bulb.

It's nice to be out in the rain. The spring grass can be so lush, I like the scents of the spring garden.

Your flowering shrubs are wonderful. Lilacs are beautiful. The last time I saw wisteria was near San Francisco a few years ago. It's an amazing plant.

I think your hillside is quite different from mine, but it's lovely to read about what you've done with yours.

What pleasure to read what you’ve been up to, Melissa! I’m glad you’ve gotten rain and your spring show will soon begin. ‘Jetfire’ must be a strong little guy, for I have it too. It’s survived some awfully hot and neglected conditions here, yet it pops up faithfully each spring. It must not require much chill, for it certainly doesn’t get it here. How wonderful that you can grow peonies and lilacs! That’s something to really look forward to each year, other than than the roses. I’m so glad everything is finally green for you. What a relief the rain must be! I expect you’ll have a good show this year. Isn’t it a pleasure to work in the cool temperatures and the soft earth? Even the next day soreness is kind of a “good pain”, as long as it’s not too overwhelming:) I’m glad you “had so much fun.” I could feel it coming through in your writing. Lisa

I think everybody's happy in April. Bart, good to hear that you've been out working in your garden. I've been feeling awfully creaky this year, but out I went just the same. Some of the achiness has been going away as the weather warms.

What a theft-worthy idea, Cath: snowflakes and white narcissus. In fact they're blooming at the same time in my woods garden, but it didn't occur to me to put them together. The snowflakes were planted a year and a half ago and came back handsomely this spring. They're native to this area.

Lisa, I do love lilacs, and they love it here. The deer can do a good deal of damage, and we can't protect everything. But what genial plants. Also peonies, which for some reason nothing seems to want to eat, dig up, or damage. Odd. I put in a peony walk last year, and all the peonies are up this spring. There are twenty-three of them, and I'm hoping for years of happiness from this planting. Preparing the holes is the biggest part of the job; after this, it's up to the peonies, which are willing growers here. I'm trying to reach peony saturation. There are still several in the propagation beds for which I have to find a place.

It's a pleasure to hear how many people are happy out in their gardens.

The thing I worry about with lilacs is that I've read that they need cold in the winter in order to bloom,so the only ones I have are tiny plants that I dug up from the bases of local semi-wild lilacs that were clearly in bloom after a typical non-harsh winter. But I would like to be more adventurous. Where do you get yours, Melissa? From your comments I do get the impression that your area might have colder winters than ours does, but I also know that you are from Florida, whereas I'm from Maryland,so I think our perceptions of weather are quite different. Also, I'd love to hear more about peonies. I have little success with them,but also have never given them much effort, nor have I ever been serious about purchasing them (just bought cheapies from non-specialty stores ) How do you prepare ground for them? what type light exposure? One tree peony that I bought uber-cheap from a grocery store turned out to have very beautiful flowers,but they drooped even under the spring sun,so I moved it. But now I fear that I put it in too much shade. D'you think I could move it yet again (it would be the third time).

Cath, I didn't realize you were on a slope as well! Though I'd love to see pictures, I hesitate to ask, since I myself can't post them. Jeri, I forgot that you, too, have to "cope with a slope"!

Bart, about lilacs and peonies and winter chill. I suspect you could grow them, though you should look around and see what people have in their gardens in your area. We've had a couple of winters in late years where the temperatures hardly fell below freezing; there was one year when my Salvia guarantica never froze back and got up to fourteen feet the following summer, and the Teas starting blooming in March. But, even that year, the tulips and cherries, the peonies and lilacs, the once blooming old roses all flowered.

There are different kinds of lilacs, but the classic ones everybody knows are bred from Syringa vulgaris, which is the semi-wild lilac, I'm guessing, that you got suckers from, and with similar needs. Where to buy them from is a question. Early on I bought all the kinds they had from Priola, though their real interest is perennials, not shrubs; then a local nursery for some years offered color coded varieties, without the names though they were named kinds, and picked up similar ones from another nursery, also color coded. My impression is that there are a handful of varieties that are fairly common, and others will take more looking, or you really need to go to a specialist, which could be expensive. Pay attention to the rootstock, as I believe some lilacs are grafted on the species and their growth is identical. They can come own root, and I think most of mine started life as suckers.

Lilacs are tolerant, but what they really like is amended clay and full sun. Peonies, both tree and herbaceous, like part shade in summer, more sun in winter, at least, this is how I grow them. They like the same kind of soil as roses and tomatoes: a good stout clay well amended with organic matter, the hole well dug. I've had trouble getting them started, too, mainly because I didn't prepare holes adequately in our terrible ground. That's why I was thorough when I thought up the peony walk. Sometimes peonies will hold out in conditions where nothing else will grow, but you can't rely on it. I don't think they like to bake in the sun in shallow light soil. There are Mediterranean peonies, too, herbaceous, and there are a few good ones that are pretty easy to find: the double red whose name I forget, 'Mollis', and P. peregrina, commonly found in the form of two named varieties. I'm writing a bit hastily right now; I have to go. Anyway, if your interested you should look into them, both do really well here, and I think they likely would in your area, too.

Krista, think how much spring you have ahead of you! All that pleasure ahead. Wisteria is wonderful. People complain about it, but to me it's beautiful in every season, and it will be in every garden I ever plant where the climate allows.

Thanks for these comments, Melissa. I guess it might be worth -while to perhaps buy a lilac from, say, Rose Barni,since it seems logical that they'd sell varieties that bloom well in this climate. I've been meaning to order from Priola myself someday!