How is your garden looking today?

cold sad and wintry, a few primroses and miniature daffodils out, bluebell leaves are up, pretty crab apples glowing a lovely apricot colour and sparrows and bluetits on the hanging peanut feeders and eating the bread we put out.

the climbing roses desperately need cutting back and so i must do it at the beginning of next month before the birds start nesting ( it happened last year and they didn't get pruned - if i don't do them this year we'll disappear under the thorns like Sleeping Beauty)

This is how my iris and tulip bed looked this morning,with how it looked last spring.

We don't even have snow to cover the nasty dead leaves and shrubs. in the last few years we've had one really hot dry summer and 3 bitter winters. Even the rhodies are mostly dead.

It's a bit wet outside, but I trimmed the hedge by the garage door.

A bit wet? Crap, there was flooding in San Francisco that actually moved cars around!

This thread has me thinking that I need to do some clean up this weekend while te weather's good(ish).

my garden looks a lot like neko's right now - with a couple of doggie paths running through the snow drifts. I went out last night, thinking there was a good solid crust on the snow. oops, i went through - past my knees.

It has been a bit of a rough winter in Virginia, USA. At least by our standards. But hope springs eternal and Spring will come we hope.
We have had a couple of decent days--with temps in the 40 degree range F. We have two young men who drop by when the weather and their band's schedule coincide: Mica and Corndog (I'm waiting for the day when the IRS asks me: Your wrote a check, rjb, to someone named Corndog ?)
We've got three acres and we had a lot of damage from ice storms. But they have gotten most of that cleaned up.
I'm about to order a few dumptruck loads of mulch. This year we are going to go all out! -rjb-

Although it is bitterly cold, it is sunny, sunny, sunny! My almond tree is covered in buds; maybe the bloom will be a success this year! I sprayed it twice against peach leaf curl, so fingers crossed
Elsewhere, snowdrops everywhere, and my tiny wallflowers are blooming! Primroses are starting to bloom too. Lovely!

I've violas and primroses blooming on the balcony (roof-garden) since early February.

Roses have got many leaves as well as the hydrangeas - I hope, the momentarily snowy (and cold) nights won't do any harm.

"violas and primroses blooming" - harumphhh ! two feet of snow - but wait - when it starts to melt, the weeds will be out in no time . tuliptime is about the 2nd or 3rd week of may; we actually have a TULIP-FESTIVAL in ottawa at that time; problem is, it quite often gets so warm quickly that the tulips and other springbulbs don't last long. hoping for a lovely fall !!! hbg

I cleaned up the left-over leaves in the back yard and did a light bit of pruning. I'll tackle the front garden today. I think that 2-4 of the rhodies on the property have died. I'll give them a chance to come back (nonono, not dead, they're just sleeping!) before cutting them down .

Hamburger - Some of the leaves were still frozen to the ground here, but we don't have any snow (knocking on wood)!

HA! I did the same yesterday (that of course means i have an impossible deadline for a conference paper on monday). the back wall fell on our property, so the backyard is rather nasty. mason is coming on monday, hopefully they'll fix it soon. i put some tulips out, but it may be too late for them to 'rest' well enough to come out at all. i pruned roses and bushes, hopefully not killing them like i did last year.

It's supposed to be close to 60 degrees today. Yay! A good day to start prepping. I'm going to finish dumping the dirt from all of the containers, clear out at least one of the raised beds. Maybe throw some salmon on the grill later on.
Spring is coming.

Ah yes, I lived in Athens, GA and March 1 started spring. The little red wild roses bloomed almost all year round with a couple of lulls in the dead of 'winter'. Sigh.

Here in the SF Bay Area my daffodils are already fading. Irises are starting to bloom, and the plum and apricot tree in my garden look like they're covered in popcorn. Highs around 60, cool at night.

Hi...Another gorgeous day in VA, US. 70 degrees F.
We have, perhaps, broken winter's hold on us.
Tomorrow Mr Snow (ironic name) will be delivering 26 cubic yards of mulch (a cubic yard is 3' wide by 3' long by 3' tall). The stuff is beautiful: it's warm and has an incredible odor...it smells like the earth.

One of the first areas we are going to spread it on is on the 10' wide swath between the yard and the road that used to be only two lanes but is now five.
Fortunately we saw that coming and got coniferous trees planted several years ago.

I'm not a big fan of herbicides to knock down weeds underneath. Here is my plan based on old copies of Organic Gardening magazine: we should spread several layers of newspapers covered by the mulch (say 3"). We could punch holes as needed to plant annuals or perennials. Does this make any sense? Thanks for any ideas. -rjb-

Here is my garden yesterday. This is high summer in New Zealand and we have had weeks of floods and tornados. It is the wettest, windiest February sinc records have been kept which is 150 years. It is horrible!

Wow, Eve, that's amazing!

{what kind of tree is that weepy one?)