Honestygirl

This lovely front landscape has brightened walks in a nearby neighborhood for two years now.  What a lovely sight!   Last year, I was fortunate enough to walk by when the gardener was there.  I complimented him on it and told him how much I liked it.  I was so glad to be able to do that. This year's display, with an image from last week.

There's a redbud down below our neighbor's rental house that I think my gardening companion planted.  We garden there and behind the 100+ yr old apartment next door with permission!  It's made a nice difference in our back landscape to "clean up" and recreate those spots that we see from our porch and our lower floor.  I can see the redbud here from my studio, peeking out behind the hemlock that we planted. There's such magic in the evening light -- as I looked out the kitchen windows after dinner this evening, the redbud glowed.

I'm afraid this is going to be like the Easter freeze of some years back, where even native plants were zapped by the cold.  The tulip poplars have leafed out, the serviceberries and redbuds are in flower, as are the oaks.  We'll see.  Our quirky ginkgo has started to leaf out, too -- it's been sapped by late freezes, too, in the past, but always leafs out again. I covered my hardy greens - kale, spinach, arugula, lettuce and emerging sugar snap peas -- with remay and greenhouse film this afternoon, thankfully with my gardening companion's help, as the winds were howling. The predicted lows are about 24� F, quite low for this time of the year, even though our last "frosts" are still to come  ~ April 15, according to the revised USDA hardiness zones. Of course the polar air doesn't pay attention to any of that. I hope that radiated heat from stone raised beds and the stone pathway, with covering will be enough.  But for two nights?  Sigh. We have native ear...