These last two days have been so spectacular — soft, sunny, and warm — that I can’t stand the thought of anyone being stuck indoors. I know I’m lucky (in a previous life I worked in a windowless office) and I wish you all could be out here with us. (If it’s any consolation, I’m inside now to work on this. But the door next to my desk is wide open and the greenhouse is behind me. I’m totally lucky.)

I had to include the above daffodil pictures in this post — they’re on their way towards peak — but before they blare every trumpet I feel justified in focusing on the spring tinies. Ephemerals like the trout lily (Erythronium americanum) that has speckled the Bosquet and every garden and is just beginning to bloom; tiny primroses (Primula veris vulgaris), and European ginger (Asarum europaeum) blooming almost invisibly in the Rock Garden; weird octopus’ garden foliage and buds of Muscari armeniacum ‘Valerie Finnis’; and the innocent-looking flowers and newly emerged foliage of butterbur (Petasites japonicus). There’s no indication that in 2 or 3 weeks time the butterbur’s leaves will be as big as tea tables…

(Click on any picture for a showier show and/or mouse over for captions.)

Speaking of innocent-looking, we started taking out, dividing, and moving around perennials that have grown close together in the Idea Garden. Everything is still so tiny that it’s hard to believe they’ll ever be shoulder height (some of them) and a lot of them look exactly alike (to me) at this stage. It was like a memory test to remember what’s what. And in fact it was hard enough for me to distinguish between the mountain mint (Pycnanthemum verticillatum) — which we want to replace with a showier P. muticum — and the Monarda fistulosa ‘Claire Grace’, planted side by side that I had to resort to the sniff test. Mountain mint definitely smells mintier… And we had to do some fancy footwork to avoid stepping on all of the perennials still so tucked in that we can barely even see them. But this is the perfect time to start to play musical perennials. We can even get away with stashing The Unplanted in bags in the shade for a week or two (I don’t mind making daylilies and rudbeckia wait even longer) until we figure out where they’ll live next.

Please tell me you were able to get into your garden to dig into (or just enjoy) spring’s tinies. (I’ll feel better if you have.)

Daffodil Days start tomorrow and I’m thrilled to report that some daffodils (and a few other spring ephemerals) have arrived early for the festivities. And thousands more are on their way… Every hour from now on that the sun shines a few more will open to brighten the woods and paths. Gail and I still predict that their peak will be closer to next weekend than this but in the meantime, red-winged blackbirds are calling, there’s a blue haze of Siberian squill and periwinkle in the Bosquet, skunk cabbage are out down by the water garden, and Spring is really starting to look spring-like all over the property. (You know what I mean.)

This week we and our volunteers worked more to tidy up in the Display Garden (which from here on in I will refer to as the Idea Garden because this is where we try new plants, combinations, philosophies and hope that visitors will be inspired to take our best ideas home). We spent the coldest, windiest day in the sunny greenhouse potting on last fall’s cuttings, transplanting seedlings, and starting more seeds. (Tomatoes, basil, amaranth and celosia mean summer is coming!) And yesterday we pruned the Rose Garden roses (hard – now’s the time) and almost finished preparing the climbers for their outrageous June show. (Our hands look like we caught the pox or tangled with tigers.) So we’re officially ready for the season to keep going the way it’s going. Slow and steady. Our cat-scratched fingers are crossed that we won’t see snow again until maybe December… and we’re perfectly willing to wait until June for any 80° days.

What’s your latest spring update? Please send along a link if you’ve written about it and/or taken pictures.

I’m always a little nervous to tidy away winter’s protective cover especially while the forecasts yo-yo between mild days and frigid snowy nights. But we’re opening officially for the season next week so it must be time to push ahead and welcome spring. Despite a certain chill in the air, it feels really good to get started and the timing is actually perfect. Especially for cutting back plants like lily turf (Liriope muscari) and epimedium that are just starting to sprout. (I think epimedium’s new growth might be almost as cute as tiny baby toes. Cuter?) I’m making a mental note that if I wait much longer to take care of that task in my own garden I run the risk of nipping that new growth as it stretches skyward. Yesterday’s cut back was also necessary to reveal Blithewold’s first batch of daffodils blooming under waves of old lily turf foliage and seedheads. It was an eye test to cut the that back without decapitating those precious daffs – we certainly couldn’t have used hedge shears – and we’re determined this year – for sure this time – to move those daffodils elsewhere just as soon as they’re finished blooming. (The best time to move daffs is right after they bloom and before they disappear for the summer. Exactly when every other garden task needs doing as spring speeds towards summer…)

We also cleaned up as many of the clumps of lady’s mantle (Alchemilla mollis) that we could reach and that alone would have made the gardens look like spring is on its way. There’s something oppressive or maybe just excessively winter-ish about those brown matted leaves… I’m thrilled to see them go!

The gardens are still too wet to step into so we’ve been tidying mostly just from the edges so far (the Red Team was in today to start on the pollinator, cutting and North Gardens) and we’ll work our way in week by week. Our plan, to keep from compacting the soil this year, is to walk the plank — to put down boards to distribute our weight. That’s what they do at Christopher Lloyd’s Great Dixter in England and word is, their soil is as fluffy as a cloud. We want that! Have you tried that method? Do you use strategically placed stepping stones or do you just try to wait for the soil to dry out before stepping in to tidy up? Have you started clearing winter out of your garden? — Have you finished?

I don’t really expect much to be blooming outside in the middle of January but I also don’t expect it to be pushing 60°. A January thaw would seem more justified if the weeks leading to it had been frigid rather than merely gray, raw, and windy. But any time the air is soft and the bay is like a mirror, you won’t catch me complaining. You’ll catch me outside. The bees took advantage of yesterday’s warmth to look for flowers, so I figured I might as well look for some too. I didn’t find much though and what I did find was not covered in a swarm. …I wonder where the bees went and hope to learn more about their moves in bee school…

(click on pictures for a bigger view or mouse over for the caption.) 

While the bees did whatever they were out doing, I followed the sun around the Display Garden and cut back some of the completely fallen down stalks that were no longer contributing to the view. It was work that could have waited for the same kind of day in February or March, but didn’t have to. I left some stems as protection over the crown of certain plants like Salvia guaranitica and anise hyssop and just tidied them up a bit instead (cut them back by half or so). The betony (Stachys officinalis ‘Hummelo’) stalks broke off at the ground with barely any tugging as did all the fallen butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa) so clearly, it was time for them to be compost. I also decided to whack back most of our Pennisetum orientale ‘Karley Rose’. Is it just me or is that grass a beast with few redeeming qualities? It definitely didn’t hold my winter interest and flopped around a little too much over the summer at least where we had it (smack in the middle of the pollinator bed path. I freely admit that was my bad idea. Maybe I’ll like it better somewhere else. Then again, maybe not. Live and learn.)

Have you had the chance to get outside during a balmy thaw yet? What did you do? – Anything blooming? For a world-wide look at January blooms, head over to May Dreams Gardens for Garden Bloggers Bloom Day!

A comment from Kira on my last post echoes a sentiment I read recently in an article by Tovah Martin in Horticulture Magazine and something I’m feeling the crush of too: we’ve had a long enough break from the garden. Isn’t a month or two around the holidays plenty of time before we start feeling the pull of plants again? That’s why Tovah so smartly forces spring bloomers inside. And that’s why Kira (one of our volunteers, incidentally), Gail and I and probably the entire population of gardeners exiled indoors devour every word in every seed catalog. Starting about now, we cannot wait for spring.

I suspect I’d be more interested in winter – because I usually love it – if last week’s snowfall hadn’t parked on the garden like a Mack truck. My hopes of seedheads poking prettily up through winter snows were laid flat. Now I can almost see now the virtue in cutting everything back in fall because why not? if it isn’t going to add loveliness to our winter view. But I  have to remember it isn’t just for us. The birds don’t care what it looks like, so we’ll keep keeping as much standing for them as we can.

As gloomy as I’m suddenly feeling about winter, if spring really was right around the corner, I’d probably say I wasn’t ready after all. Gail and I still need the time to go through catalogs and attend classes (maybe bee school for me this year) and even though I’m no good at waiting (a whole week between Downton Abbey episodes makes me crazy) I know that anticipation will sweeten spring’s arrival. Meanwhile there’s nothing to do for it but to go out and find the pretty in winter and practice Zen-like patience. I’m glad to report that it was easier than I thought it would be to enjoy winter this morning as the fog lifted off the snow. Even tipped over and smashed, the garden was as pretty as I could ever hope it would be.

Is the wait of winter weighing heavily on you – or your garden – too?