Remember when you were a kid impatiently waiting for the Merry-go-round to slow down so you could hop on and choose your horse? Dashing around to find the big white one, then suddenly spotting a great wild brown one, and then finally climbing up on a black one to sit beside your buddy. These first really balmy spring days have had me feeling just like a kid on a Merry-go-round, running around from one garden job to another, unable to choose.
I started out tackling the perennial border. It was still filled with the stiff skeletons of last summer's blooms - phlox, mallows, asters, black-eyed Susans, and even astilbes. Breaking off handfuls of these brittle stalks was easy until I came to the first peony, much too wiry to break. I went to get the clipper, but as I passed through the vegetable garden, I spotted the flat of lettuce I'd left on the wall, so I forgot about the peony and began transplanting the lettuce to the cold frame.
Eventually I remembered the border, found the clipper and went back to continue spring cleaning. I think I'm getting too old and arthritic to take care of a 100-foot-long border of perennials. By the time I'd removed the old stalks from three sections of the split-rail fence I had to quit, unable to even wheel the garden cart to the compost bin. I headed for the house to lie down.
When I started back out to do another three sections, I saw the pile of seed packets on the back porch and realized that planting vegetable seeds took a higher priority. I found the stakes and string and planted rows of carrot, Swiss chard, radish and onion seeds, then went inside to put the kettle on the stove. Do you know about that trick? Pouring boiling water on a row of carrot seeds makes them sprout twice as fast. Believe me. I've proved it by treating only half a row with boiling water the year I read about this weird treatment. Carrot seeds take forever to germinate but that half showed teeny green leaves two weeks before the other half.
Back to the border. By the time I'd emptied the garden cart and started cleaning the next section of fence, my back was in pretty bad shape, but I finished two more sections before I heard the mail lady drive up, giving me an excuse to quit. Lying down with the Wall Street Journal was a treat.
Things progressed in similar fashion all afternoon as I raced from one garden job to another, taking mini rest periods in between. By the end of the day the stalks from all nine sections of fence that backed the perennial border were lying stiff and dry on the compost pile. Of course getting rid of the stalks was only the beginning of spring cleaning the border. Over the next week I filled the garden cart a dozen times with the dead leaves that had nestled among the plants for the long winter. Along with the leaves I uprooted dozens and dozens of Jill-over-the-ground, vetch and bedstraw vines. That's the trouble with a flower bed right next to a pasture. All those nasty weeds just love to sneak through the fence and settle in among the flowers.
I also tried to get rid of dandelions and self-seeded violets. It's probably a waste of time to try to eliminate the violets each spring, but if I don't, I'm sure to have nothing but violets in every inch of empty soil the next year. Violets are cleistogamous. That's not an infectious disease. It merely means that besides the pretty purple blossoms, violets have a second set of blossoms. These stunted flowers lurk at the base of each plant and produce capsules of seeds to guarantee future generations.
As for the dandelions, eradicating them is a joke. The dandelion's motto is "Never say die." Dig as deep as you like and pull with the utmost care, but I can guarantee you'll leave behind the last bit of root, and that's all a dandelion needs to produce another new plant. Contractile cells form a weak link at the tip of the root, the same sort of cells that exist in the tail of lizard. The lizard will grow a new tail, but the dandelion will grow a new head.
The fun part of outdoor spring cleaning, as opposed to indoor spring cleaning (which has no fun parts) is rearranging the flower bed, - dividing plants, removing those you don't like any more and the best part, putting in exciting new plants. Unfortunately before these delightful occupations, I always add compost to the soil. According to my new back doctor, that job is not recommended, so instead of lugging full buckets of compost from the bin to the garden, I now fill my buckets only half full, put them in the garden cart and slowly wheel them to the border.
Inevitably I get waylaid between the compost bin and the border, spotting a Chinese forget-me-not popping up in a corner of the vegetable garden that should be moved to the flower bed, filling in another one of Rumple's holes in the lawn with compost. Frustrating to have a dog that loves to dig, but what can I do - she's just copying her mistress. I eventually finished adding compost and when we get another beautiful day I can get to the fun part. Ah, but the lawn needs mowing and the English ivy out front has so many old leaves burned brown by the winter that the tender new green ones can't even be seen.
That's alright. That's what these first balmy days are all about, racing around with the thrill of finally being out in the garden after the long cold winter.
