I was disappointed this week watching the daffodils fade already. It seemed they only lasted a week. I had expected them to bloom longer. Fortunately, the ones in the shadier areas of the yard are just coming into bloom, so I should be able to enjoy them for another couple of weeks.
My grape hyacinths are blooming, and the regular hyacinths may bloom next week. After the vole infestation of a couple of years ago, I don’t have many hyacinths left. They didn’t eat them, but their tunneling destroyed the bulbs.
The crabapples have really come into color in the last couple of days. Unfortunately, high winds are expected, and the blossoms may get blown away. The red delicious apple doesn’t seem to have any blooms at all, while the old-fashioned apple has just a few. It may be that the flower buds were pruned off when I had the trees done. Other than missing their lovely display, I really don’t mind the lack of flowers. Less flowers means less fruit, which means less work picking apples. This may also mean fewer yellowjackets on rotting fruit on the ground.
Lovely to see are the purply-blue violets taking over the lawn. They grow so low that my husband can mow right over them without hurting them. All the violets in my yard reseeded from one or two volunteer plants of many years ago. Now there are hundreds. While some people want a pristine green velvet turf, I’m not one of them; not when I can enjoy violets. I even welcome dandelions because their color is so happy.
I spent the morning trimming back the dead leaves on the crocosmia. I wait until spring before doing this to remind me where the new shoots are so I don’t step on them. After I cleaned them up, I marked their location with flags. They are still too small to see above the sedum they are growing in. I also cut off the declining daffodils.
Then, I got out my watering can and the water-soluble blue fertilizer made famous on TV, which shall remain nameless, and gave all my flowers, including the daffs, a good feed. It is definitely time to fertilize the lawn too.
With the hotter weather, I have been irrigating every other day with both the high pressure in-ground system and the low pressure drip system. I read that rain and snow may be coming, but the probability of significant precipitation is minimal.
Hurrah for Spring!
— JoAnne Skelly is an Associate Professor and Extension Educator, Emerita, University of Nevada Cooperative Extension. She can be reached at skellyj@unr.edu.
