Our Humble Garden: April Photos

Happy April Fool's Day! Here at Chez Williams we do not really celebrate this nonsense holiday, though I'm sure you will find this change in a few years when our kids enter school.

Just because she's cute

March was a fun month for the garden. We had a week and a half of unseasonably warm weather, up into the 80's (Fahrenheit) and so all of our plants woke up. Behind our home is a path lined with a fence. And just behind that path is a row of flowering pear trees. They are gorgeous when the come into bloom. A little neighbor girl calls them "snow trees" and she isn't far off. Watching them bloom is one of my favorite parts of early spring.

Pear trees

For some reason our garden wakes up a little later than most of the other garden-like spaces around here. Late in February all of the crocuses were showing up around town and ours didn't appear until March. Now it's April and our daffodils are just beginning to bloom, while all over town the daffodils are long past and the tulips are taking over. Our tulips are just coming up.

Forsythia

One of the most exciting parts of this spring has been the blooming of both of our cherry trees. We have a cherry tree in front of our house and one in the back corner. Both are supposed to produce fruit and not be simply ornamental. Last year we got three blossoms on our back tree and three corresponding cherries. The front tree just ignored spring. But this year both trees have had a pretty good number of blossoms, so I am hopeful we will actually get a handful or so of fruit. Of course, we are going to have to fight the birds. In future years we may need to net the trees until the fruit ripens, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there.

Cherry tree out front

Now that it is April the weather is finally warm enough to move my bird bath back out into the back yard. I love, love, love my birdbath because it is a gorgeous splash of color. Plus, it is fun to watch birds act so silly in the water.

It's back!

Let's see, what else? Oh, yeah, Our wisteria is waking up and that means we have to prepare for its rapid growth. As you can see, last year we didn't anticipate such quick movement and the trellises that Charles built were not quite sufficient. This year he has only provided what I call stepping-stone-like-rods to help them get up onto our deck. We shall see if this proves sufficient or if he'll be out there mid-May adding more rods for them to grow on. My hope is that by the end of the summer all three wisteria will have made it to the back deck and will start working on covering it. I'm sure that five years from now, our back deck is going to be stunning!

Hyacinth

So far this spring Johanna hasn't had a chance to come out and spruce up our garden, but she's going to need to make some time soon. Our garden is a bit of a mess. Truth be told, our attempt at permaculture was not successful. We waited too long. There was not enough time for the cardboard to completely break down. So we have had to pull some of it back so the plants underneath it can thrive. We will experiment with this again, but not until October. We hare hopeful that the extra few months will enable the cardboard to completely break down. Anyway, it has left our garden looking messy.

Forsythia bush

On the docket for this month (or maybe early in May) is not only the sprucing up of the garden, but the start of our latest experiment: the pallet garden! So stay tuned for more change throughout the month.