If it wasn’t for Gail’s lists and ability to prioritize, I’d probably have lost my tiny mind by now. There is so much to do that seems to need doing right-this-minute that without the lists, I’d feel pulled in a gajillion different directions at once. Like I am at home. (Let this be a lesson to me.)

Our priority for this week was to plant annuals and tender perennials — to get them out of their confining nursery pots and into the ground, now that the nights are suddenly and consistently warm. But first, before we could do that, we had to take the tulips out of the gardens. (We plant annuals in the tulips’ place, which is great because it keeps the soil we plant in fluffy and easy to dig.) The timing worked out perfectly: most of the tulip flowers that held on into this week were shattered by rain so we had no remorse digging them up for summer storage down cellar. (We’ll let the foliage die back for a week or two before detaching it from the bulbs. Then we’ll keep the bulbs dry and dark in labeled paper bags until we’re ready to plant them again in the fall.)

But first, to make room downstairs for the tulips, we had to bring up the dahlias. Again the timing was just right because they’re beginning to grow. We potted some up and will plant the rest directly in the ground in the next week or two.

But first, to make room in the greenhouse for the dahlias — and to harden off the plants that needed planting this week — we had to move them outside. And then we had to place them where we wanted to plant them in the gardens. I wish I had gotten pictures of everyone working so hard to accomplish all of this but I had plants or a spade in my hand the whole time too. (I wish I was better at multitasking…) Instead here are the Rose and North Garden after tulips-out and planting.

If planting (with its attendant to-dos) was all we had to keep track of I could probably keep my head and post a blog or two. But we were also pulled towards the plants already in the gardens, which have responded to the change from spring to summer with a burst of growth. Keeping up with the weeds is one thing but it’s also time to do the Chelsea Chop (so named because the timing coincides with the world famous Chelsea Flower Show in London). Mid-to late-summer bloomers can use a trim by a third to a half now (and even again a time or two before the end of June) to keep them from becoming leggy or top heavy and splaying open as they bloom. It takes hard-core optimism to whack back beautiful new growth but after forgetting to do it, I can say it’s well worth it. Especially for plants like agastache, beebalm, rudbeckia, coreopsis, asters, boltonia, helianthus, kalimeris, Sedums like ‘Autumn Joy’, … Their flowers might come out a little later and they might be smaller but there will be more of them and the plant will look lush. And if we don’t have to run around staking things later, it’s time well spent.

And to top off “planting week”, Betsy and Gail added container design to yesterday’s list so that we could plant them today while a little more rain waters the gardens in.

What’s on your to-do list right now? (Do you write one or do you go a little nuts like me?) Do you remember to stop and enjoy it?

Even though the daffodils are still blooming their little hearts out I can’t help looking forward to the next thing(s) following hot on their heels. The tulips and cherry trees are just getting going, winter hazel and crabapples are on the way. I’m pretty sure that the spring display is just going to keep getting more and more spectacular. More colorful, anyway. It may be too early to tell, but at least right now my favorite tulips are a color reverse pair in the Cutting Garden — ‘Gavota’, which is red with yellow edges and its opposite, ‘Boston’. And I’m really enjoying ‘Silverstream’ in the Rose Garden. Even though we planted them in the herb garden last year (and again this year) I had forgotten that they start out a paintbox mix of flecked yellows, pinks and reds. So pretty.

And now that we have cut back, tidied, and weeded (mostly) the gardens, divided and redistributed perennials and moved some shrubs like playing musical plants, we’re ready for what comes next. Planting new things! It’s a thrill to finally see the available real estate and begin to envision where the gardens will take us this year that I can hardly wait. But our perennial plant orders haven’t arrived yet and local nurseries haven’t quite stocked up or opened doors yet.

So in the meantime we’re using our gotta-plant energy to catch up on greenhouse work and think about moving out. In fact, the sweet peas went outside last week, ready for planting in the next couple of days, weather permitting. Next out will be all of the nearly-hardy perennials and shrubs like rosemary, phormium (some are out already and didn’t mind the touch of frost the other night), farfugium, camellias, and various and sundry salvias like S. guaranitica and S. leucantha. We’re really on a roll now even though we have to hold our horses a little.

What’s next in your garden? Are you ready to plant new things yet or are you still tidying, weeding, dividing and redistributing (like I am at home)?

Did anyone else hear Punxsutawney Phil’s Groundhog Day prediction as a rallying cry? If spring is truly right around the corner, we’d better get busy. That said, any of Phil’s kin living in my backyard would have nipped back to the burrow for a longer winter… But I’m not inclined to procrastinate winter work – just in case – and I’d always rather think spring will come sooner than later anyhow. So we’re checking our tool inventory to make sure we’re prepared to dig in, counting our incoming seed packets, and getting our plants ready too.

Although it seems too soon to say it, I think the light has begun to change. The sun is noticeably higher in the sky and even though the air temperature is wicked cold, the sun at least makes it look warmish outside. And it’s definitely warmer inside. The greenhouses are getting into the 60′s and 70′s and the plants are loving it so much that it’s time to cut them back.

Cutting our tender perennials (the salvias, stachytarpheta, heliotrope, African blue basil, cupheas, fuchsias, and plectranthus to name most of our favorites) back now to a low framework — some 12″ from the pot or less depending on the size of the plants — will give them a chance to push out fresh bushy growth well before they go in the ground in May. And I hope they’ll look less naked for our official opening days in April than they would if we waited another couple of weeks. (Meanwhile, don’t forget, the grounds and greenhouse are still actually open to the public.) There are one or two other benefits to cutting back now: when we lop off the tenderest new growth we evict the worst of the aphid and whitefly infestations without having to spray insecticidal soap or neem oil concoctions — which we resist doing when the sun’s out because the leaves can so easily burn. And any tips that aren’t infested can go straight into the cutting bench for more, more, more.

Outside, Nature has been helping with the winter pruning. The sun is suddenly shining in the bamboo grove classroom, which was opened to the sky when half of a huge Norway maple came down in last week’s blow. No doubt the grove will recover when the new shoots shoot up in May/June, though the rest of the busted tree will have to come down at some point.

Are you working hard to prepare for spring? Has Nature been “helpful” in your garden too this winter?

The plants in the greenhouse are more ambitious than I am. If I possibly could, I would spend the short, dark days of December curled up on the couch. But our plants are making use of what little sunlight is on offer, along with the eternal-spring (relative) warmth of supplemental radiant heat, and actually growing. Go figure. The cuttings we took in September are well-branched and blooming. The ones we took in October and potted up last month have produced three or more sets of leaves. And now they all need pinching to keep their focus on growing more than flowering. And there’s no way I can cut these plants back without turning those beautiful tips into more cuttings. They get full credit for keeping me off the couch.

Taking cuttings of our cuttings is on the list of to-dos every December despite the fact that low light and lower temperatures will make them take longer to root. Some of them might not make it. But from the ones that do, we’ll take more cuttings in the spring. That way, as the plants we already made grow and become pot stressed and unhappy, we’ll have a rotation of fresh plants to take their place if need be. (Though we do often plant even the oldest, woodiest, worst looking plants because they take off like the picture of health once they go in the ground.)

But I can’t let myself go crazy propagating because space is tight in the greenhouse and we don’t need more of everything. We also don’t altogether know what we’ll need because we only have ideas about next year’s gardens so far, not actual plans. That’s for January. I’m confident that we will always plant as many African blue basils as we have, whether it’s a tray-full or 10 trays-full, and Gail and I are both smitten with a new-to-us Salvia called ‘Wendy’s Wish’. (More about that one when I do top 12 for 2012 post.) We also always make a few more heliotrope and assorted cuphea over the course of the winter, but I had to restrain myself from sticking every perfect cutting I pinched. A tray-full will do until we know where we’ll use them next season and how many we’ll ultimately need.

Are you feeling as ambitious as I am this December? Did you take cuttings this fall? Have you been taking cuttings of those cuttings or will you wait until spring?

We’ve spent the last couple of weeks moving back into the greenhouse; a touch of frost fell this past Saturday morning; and we’re mentally preparing to take the gardens apart this week to make way for tulips. But the season isn’t over. There are a few plants that only just got started and I think they were totally worth the wait. Pineapple sage (Salvia elegans) came back as robust green mounds of sweetly fragrant but otherwise blah foliage until finally deciding to bloom its heart out. It’s really too bad the hummingbirds missed this one. Trumpet spurflower too (Rabdosia longituba) was pretty boring looking until the muppet-lipped cobalt-blue water droplets finally appeared and I’m only sorry that anyone who chooses to visit other times of year instead of right now misses its magic.

Nobody ever minds waiting for mums. I don’t think ‘Sheffield Pink’ would be as pretty without a backdrop of fall color, in this case the dawn redwood hedge beginning to color up. And of course asters. But we have been frustrated enough by their tardiness – and in some cases, the enormous mass of their plain foliage through the summer – that we moved most out the North Garden where they also always got in the way of our fall game of musical perennials. But the bees love them so here they are (I believe this one is ‘October Skies’) in the Display Garden instead.

Plectranthus ciliatus is interesting enough pre-bloom with its army-green, purple backed leaves and stems that the glowing lavender flowers are like icing. And speaking of icing: Orostachys iwarenge. Nothing is cuter in or out of bloom.

It’s hard enough to take apart gardens that are still in bloom – dahlias, nicotiana, amaranth, African blue basil, tassel flower, coreopsis and a truckload of other things are in bloom still or all over again in the Cutting Garden, slated for pitching tomorrow – that if we didn’t have a few true late bloomers tucked in strategic places where they won’t need to be disturbed, I’d be heartsick.

What’s blooming new or still or again in your garden? For an inspirational look at October blooms every-which-where, head over to Garden Bloggers Bloom Day at May Dreams Gardens.