Early April in the Garden

After surprise sunshine on Easter Sunday, we had two more good days for walking and working in the garden. I protected the clump of trillium at the base of the big cedar tree that hangs over the patio, while I used the blower to clean off the latest dusting of pollen and cedar "flowers". 

The primroses scattered around the edge of the lawn glow like jewels. 

 While down on my hands and knees cleaning the beds, refreshing plants or replacing them with new ones, I found the violets blooming. 

The forsythia glows from down at the bottom of the garden. 

The path to the deck is all cleaned up too. 

I replaced old scraggly heucheras with new, brightly colored plants in several places. 

The Magnolia stellata is in bloom down by the deck. 

Camellias come into bloom depending on their variety. This white one makes good cut flowers for the house. 

New green on these barberries lights up the path to the front of the house. 

I wish the true blue color of these chionodoxa came through in the photo. 

We are hoping our Mason bees hatch out and find the Oregon Grape blooms. They are wonderfully fragrant. 

On Monday it was warm enough to open up the green house

and give the geraniums a sun bath. Today they are all back inside with the door closed. 

Today the buttercups, Ranunculus, will not have their shiny faces open to the sun like they did on Monday. 

Green is bubbling up all over. 

The daffodils are almost done.

Soon it will be tulip time.

While I was crawling around, cleaning and planting, Tom was reclaiming the lawn from the raccoon damage and the moss. 

Tom put on moss killer about a month ago. We have put down the first application of grub killer chemicals, although they are still alive down there, but no longer feeding on the sod roots. The raccoons haven't been around for a while, and we are hoping they will move on to someone else's yard. Tom has roughed up the soil where the sod was stripped off by the raccoons and raked the dead moss out and has reseeded and dressed the seeded areas with compost. The rain today was right on time. 

He still has more to do on the lower lawn, but on the shady half he is just going to let the moss win. It's green too, after all, and happier than grass there. 

It looks like we'll have on and off rain for the next five days or so. I might have to find inside jobs to do.