I've been waiting for spring since December. Today the calendar says we're well into the anticipated season and I'm sitting inside the house wondering when the rain and cold will go away and warm temperatures come to stay.
I did get carried away last week when we had several days of sunshine and the gardens kept yelling, "come and work." I didn't because I had a bad cold, but I did check through the garden catalogues I keep for reference and ideas and then went online to look for small trees to replace a twenty-year-old Japanese maple that died (yes, I know they can live for many times that) and a weeping birch that curved like the Henry Lauder Walking Stick. The birch had stopped producing leaves last spring because of a very late, very hard frost that killed all the leaflets and it never recovered. I cut it down at the end of summer. An unwise decision, probably, because it might have been fine this year.
I found a great site and ordered three trees, the third to replace a crape myrtle that I want to plant elsewhere. Knowing hydrangeas do well in our area, I bought two of the limelight hydrangea trees and a hardy camellia. All will grow to about ten feet tall and five feet wide which will be perfect flanking the walk to our front door. They were immediately shipped and sit in a sheltered spot waiting for planting. I can't wait to get them into the ground and growing.
But first, I have to take out the Japanese maple, and the stump of the birch, temper the soil, add compost, move the crape myrtle and dig the holes. If the rain and wind don't stop soon I will don raincoat, boots and cap and start the doing. At least the ground is soft and digging won't be terrible. But I do have to wait for a bit of dry before amending the soil and planting.
Ah well. Maybe the sun will shine tomorrow.
