Tuesday, April 07, 2009

First Crocus :)

"Why put off 'til tomorrow what you can postpone 'til the following spring?"
- Slacker Kate

Those were my famous words last fall when I decided to ride horses instead of clean up the garden beds and prepare them for winter. You know the drill, rake out the leaves, snip the flower stalks down to the ground, blah, blah, blah. At the time I had all sorts of valid reasons* why this made sense.

But, the true valid reason was that it looked like a whole lot of toil and trouble and I just didn't feel like working that hard. Now I'm working twice as hard, raking up about a hundred pounds of soggy wet dead leaves.

But look who I found underneath that slimy mess! First Crocus blossoms of the season.


* There are two schools of thought on garden clean up. Postponing that hard work until spring adds interesting texture to the winter garden. Tall flower stalks encourage snow to drift, giving plants more moisture. But, I'm discovering spring clean up is twice as messy. And, also a little tricky. Since I have to carefully work around the new growth so as not to damage this year's flowers.

6 comments:

Nate Torrence said...

These are beautiful!


www.theivesinthenight.blogspot.com

Iron Needles said...

I subscribe to the spring clean up school. I love spring clean up. Gives me a chance to reacquaint myself with my old friends.

Wunx~ said...

Then of course, there's The Way of the wunx~. Leave it all to rot, nature will take care of it eventually...

Kate/High Altitude Gardening said...

Unless, of course, you've left so much to rot that it's deeper than the baby Crocus! :D

Sunflower Ranch said...

I'm in Zone 9, near Mt. Rainier. We had a lot of snow and our fall ended before I had a chance to clean out the pots and the beds. Everything died from the sub-freezing weeks we had, but it's pretty easy to dispose of the old stalks here and there, since nothing grew underneath that I've discovered yet. I'm currently battling moss in the grass. Between rain storms. Your blog is inspiring! Keep up the great work.

Kate/High Altitude Gardening said...

Thanks, Sunflower! That's very kind of you to say.

By the way.... I was just over at your blog and I LOVE that photo of the hummingbird!