Barbara Sparks
Garden Diary
Norwalk, Connecticut

First Time! Out in my Garden this Year, March 28

On my knees in the grass, raking leaves caught up in the iris! Pulling up onion grass. Why are the iris so tall (they are in a sheltered spot) and the sixty tulips so wizened (cold by the wall?) It was a hard, dry winter and maybe the tulips won't bloom. A bit of spring wetness most mornings doesn't add up to much rain.

Second time! April 2nd!

Back to my knees under the windows, this time the lavender is getting my attention. It is a nest of leaves. Jalna, my mentor, writes from Holland that she is volunteering in a Dutch garden. She says Dutch clean is spotless, leaving not one leaf. So much litter, it would take forever to get it all. I did remove something that I suspect was hemlock. I was very careful, didn't touch it. The most poisonous of all plants, it looks like Queen Anne's Lace. I can't wait till my third time in the garden when I will be putting in some seeds.

All Day in the Garden, April 14th

It is raining today, which is perfect. Yesterday, we planted seed packets, larkspur, delphinium, lupines and sunflowers, cornflowers, flax and marigolds. I wonder what will come up! Jalna, who always gives me good advice, tells me to wait till May 1st, but it has been so warm. The soil feels pleasantly warm and dry and it is supposed to reach 80 degrees in a day or two.

I put the birdbath pedestal into place and scrubbed the copper basin and a piece of masonry sculpture that sits on top. The sculpture is a fawn in honor of the three deer that came through the front garden very early one morning. The days were just beginning to be light earlier and I happened to be at the window, looking out. Their mouths were open and they were breathing hard. They filed down the trees at the edge of our property, crossed the street quickly and leaped over the wall to the church cemetery. Wonderful to have wildlife in my garden, especially when they are in too much of a hurry to eat things.

April 28th

Stiff and sore today after too much time spent in the garden yesterday. Once I started, I couldn't stop; it was too perfect a day to stop. The masses of violets perfume the air. Everything is coming up (but not in bloom), peonies, azaleas, cornflowers, flax, lavender, iris, clematis and roses. Twenty three or so lilies (but who is counting) are several inches tall on one side of the trellis fence and sweet peas, also not yet blooming, are robust on the other.

Yesterday, I made a trellis copying one I saw in a neighbor's yard. They were using theirs for beans, so simple and elegant. The vertical supports are simply two bamboo poles tied together at the top, making an inverted "vee". The horizontal bamboo piece stretches between two supports, and the "trellis" can be continued as far as you wish. Theirs was in more of a sheltered spot, I'm hoping for a screen effect, although it is only waist high. I've planted runner beans, a lobata and a cypress vine. All of which are exceptionally vigorous with a ten foot stretch, I may be overdoing it. The runner bean can mildew badly or the whole thing could blow down. I don't know how much weight it can manage. We shall see.

I also planted Love-lies-bleeding, (I can't resist it, it is so Victorian), where it was last year, under the front windows. Last year, I removed the iris from their front row position and tidied the edge with brick placed in a saw tooth pattern.

To find out more about Barbara, visit her website at www.c-sparks.com

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