Yesterday was the kind of day that made me feel very sorry for anyone stuck indoors. High 60s, sunny blue sky, birds singing, bees buzzing: Exactly the kind of short-sleeves day we all desperately crave when it’s hot as blazes or when it’s bone-chilling cold out. Exactly the kind of day best spent soaking up the warmth of the sun, sucking up the scent of the fragrant honeysuckle (Lonicera fragrantissima), and getting the garden cut back, and roses pruned and transplanted. Which is exactly how Gail, Tricia — our new garden intern, and I spent our day.

Your employer should thank me for suggesting that the very next time a day like that is forecast for a work day (tomorrow by the looks of it), you call in well and get your body outside. Disregard the calendar, quit worrying too much about the pendulum swinging, and cut back the buddleia, lespedeza and caryopteris. Go for it. It’s time and it will do you good to get out and enjoy it.

So what will you do on the next blue day? I’ll feel better if you tell me you’ll at least be able to open the windows, and will try to invent excuses, like a friend of mine did yesterday, to take some mini-walks around the neighborhood…

I also think it would be good for you — and good for your garden — to plan on taking another day off on Thursday, April 5 to attend a day of lectures on Planting for the Future by Doug Tallamy, author of Bringing Nature Home, and Warren Leach, brilliant landscape designer and co-owner of Tranquil Lake Nursery. I have heard both of them speak several times and they always keep me at the edge of my seat: Doug with his fervent call to arm our gardens with certain native plants in order to recreate a working ecosystem; and Warren with inspirational design ideas that show that environmentally friendly gardens can still be highly ornamental and sublimely lovely. Please come if you possibly can.

It’s hard not to want pretty things on Valentine’s Day. Or any day for that matter. Especially any day in February. But the sun is climbing higher, the plants in the greenhouse are perking up, and lucky for me, there are blooms and buds galore just in time – and just in time for Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day over at May Dreams Gardens tomorrow.

We are also finalizing our plant orders and that definitely satisfies my deep desire for pretty right now too. I went back through Annie’s Annuals yesterday and couldn’t stop clicking “add to wishlist” just to see all the plants I covet on one page. (Two pages actually. – I’ve been very restrained.)

Speaking of everything on one page, Blithewold has joined Pinterest! I have to admit to being suddenly a little bit obsessed with that site and elected to direct my addiction towards “pinning” pictures of the plants in our gardens. The North, Rock, and Rose Gardens are filling up and I’m going to start a greenhouse board too. I have been dragging my feet about producing spreadsheet plant lists for each garden – now I know why: this is prettier. And more helpful for anyone who doesn’t know plants from their names alone. (I’m still planning to make spreadsheets available for visitors.) You don’t have to be a member of Pinterest to cruise our boards but if you are a member, I’d love to see you on our list of followers.

Are you surrounding yourself with pretty things today too – virtually or for real?

The birds are singing, the Mt. Aso pussywillow (Salix chaenomeloides ‘Mt. Aso’) is coloring buds, crocus are emerging, and it feels for all the world like early-spring outside. Given that we really ought to still be tucked into winter, it would be a little premature to start cutting the garden back quite yet. But unless winter suddenly shows up in the next few Groundhog’s Day weeks, we will be out cutting the gardens back earlier than usual. It’s high time to take a tool inventory and sharpen a few things (and in our case, replace a few) to get ready.

Almost exactly a year ago I did a post on how-to sharpen pruners and I’m sorry to have to print a total retraction now. I had taken a few lessons from my husband (who I reported as having a keen interest in anything at least as sharp as my wit) and what he taught made perfect sense to me. I recommended flattening the flat side of the blade of and touching up the bevel.

Alas flattening the flat side wasn’t a great idea – particularly for the grape shears we use for deadheading. Over the course of the summer, snip after snip seized up, refusing to close and ever snip again. The garden volunteers, quite rightly, wanted my head on a platter. It was that frustrating.

Below is a video produced by DMT, the makers of the diamond sharpeners we use. In it you’ll see that the correct way to sharpen a bypass pruner is to run the file only along the bevel from the inside out, pushing towards the edge rather than away from it. (Away strokes raise a burr.) Check their website for more videos on how to sharpen snips, scissors, knives, etc.

My fingers are crossed that no one ruined any good tools by following my bum advice. I have some hope because the pruners I use daily never seized up or failed to cut properly. And luckily our Felcos are still working properly. (I have deleted the erroneous post from our archives.)

Have you been tending to your tools, getting ready for a spring that might be here before we know it? Do you have any advice – or admonitions – to share?

It is prettier than the old map, interactive (click on it to check out the zip code zone finder), and the information is finally up to date. But it’s not good news and there are no surprises here. Nothing we haven’t already figured out for ourselves. The new map is based on weather-station data collected between 1976 and 2005 (as opposed to the 1990 map, which was based on data from 1974-1986.) I’m actually surprised at the similar spread of years used in the data collection – it feels like the temperature changes have been more wildly noticeable in the years since the last map was drawn and with that bias the map might tell a different story. We are living through proof that wild swings occur from one year to the next and so far this wimpy winter could count to notch our zone even higher.

Blithewold is solidly within the very cusp of zone 7a. (My garden a mile and a half away is 6b.) But we have always called it zone 6 to play it safe. That way we can be pleasantly surprised when marginally hardy plants come back to life again in the summer. Aucuba japonica (zone 6-10) has always bounced back for us – I only remember one winter that almost did it in. Harlequin glory bower (Clerodendrum trichotomum, zone 7-10) has been perfectly hardy too, not even dying back to the ground like the books say it should when it lives on the edge. Ours has had the protection of the North Garden wall (seen in the picture below recently repaired.) Salvia guaranitica (zone 7-10) has come back for us in the Display Garden herb bed for the last 3 years or so.

I’m tempted to use this map’s confirmation of what our experience has been to finally call our zone a 7, and as an excuse to make the best of it and test the hardiness of a few more plants. At home I have successfully overwintered leopard plant (Farfugium japonicum ‘Aureomaculata’, zone 7-8) and am trying cast iron plant (Aspidistra eliator, zone 7-11) and Tetrapanax paperifer (zone 7-10) this year. Perhaps if we found just the right spot along a south facing wall, (I have such a spot at home…) a winter blooming Edgeworthia chrysantha (zone 8-10) could be coerced to return. But I suppose that would really be pushing it. (So to speak.)

Of course it bears remembering that zone hardiness isn’t the only measure of a plant’s ability to survive in our gardens – soil quality, light and moisture levels are at least as important, over winter and summer. Has your zone changed? Will you use the new information to take a chance on anything new?

The best thing about hypertufa troughs is that they give us a place to plant tiny fragile things that might otherwise be lost, trampled, or overtaken in our gardens. They are also especially perfect for anyone interested in alpines who might not have a dedicated or perfectly situated rock garden. – We do have a dedicated rock garden but in a less than ideal situation. It’s in partial to full shade at the lowest (wettest) point on the property and we’ve found that a lot of alpines, which need a high pH and well-drained scree, struggle. In troughs, we can at least give those plants high pH (leached from the cement) and decent drainage by adding plenty of sand or grit to the potting mix.

That said, we haven’t purchased many precious alpines for the troughs (yet. – I’m lusting for saxifrages) and we filled them instead with the tiny stonecrops we can never resist when we see them for sale, and pieces of various and sundry Rock Garden survivors. I wish I had taken pictures of these troughs earlier in the season because the fall color that makes the plants extra pretty also makes them harder to identify. Please speak up if it looks like I didn’t hit the nail on the head. (Click on pictures for larger view.)

1. Sedum cauticola ‘Lidakense’- summer foliage is blue-grey, flowers are hot pink.

2. S. dasyphyllum – summer foliage is very blue and VERY tiny.

3. S. spurium ‘Voodoo’ – deep burgundy-brown foliage.

4. S. ‘Angelina’ – might need to keep an eye on this bright-orange/chartreusey  beauty. Given half a chance it will fill the whole trough. (Funny that it has all but disappeared in these troughs.)

5. Ajuga ‘Chocolate Chip’ – probably the cutest bugle ever. Its foliage is much more purplish  in the summer and does really well in partial shade.

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1. Sisynchrium ‘Lucerne’ – blue-eyed grass. Blooms tiny purplish blue stars in early summer.

2. Sedum dasyphyllum

3. S. spathuifolium ‘Cape Blanco’

4. S. ewersii – also has blue summer foliage and it’s very possible that I’ve confused it with S.  cauticola ‘Lidakense’ above. S. ewersii trails and S. cauticola has reddish stems…

5. S. ‘Angelina’

6. Ajuga ‘Chocolate Chip’

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1. Sedum sieboldii – October daphne. blue summer foliage.

2. S. dasyphyllum

3. Armeria maritima – Sea thrift. pink pom-pom flowers on and off all summer over a tuft of thread-leaf foliage.

4. Sedum kamtschaticum ‘The Edge’ – larger foliage than the others, delicately smudged in yellow with yellow flowers.

All of these plants are hardy and the troughs will stay in place outside all winter. Please let me know if you think any of these things are misidentified – and if I’ve managed to help you get a vision for creating an even prettier trough tapestry of your own. (I have all sorts of hopes and plans for next season’s batch!)