It’s time to finish garden cleanup—I’m hoping for one nice day (or even part of a day) this weekend so I can finally get that done.
Spring cleanup is always such an overwhelming chore to me—I suppose because I have so many gardens. And I’ve always thought I should do some of the cleanup in the fall, to make spring easier, but until last year had never actually gotten around to it. Also I’ve heard so many garden writers say that it’s nice to leave things up for winter, so that you have some “winter interest”. Which I can totally see. . . except that once you’ve gotten about 6 feet of snow there’s precious little “interest” left to be seen, other than the tops of the trees and the very large shrubs. On the other hand, garden writers ALSO say that you should definitely clean up things that are prone to disease and insect infestation (like peonies and irises) in the fall.
Well, I’ve just never gotten around to it in the fall. Until last year—it was nice so late into the fall and for some reason I seemed to have an inordinate amount of weekend time free. So I started by cutting off all my peonies, and then all of my irises (which I had been wanting to start cleaning up in the fall anyway, because they are sort of a pain in the spring when they’re all limp and sort of laying about everywhere—much easier to chop them off when they’re still green and upright), and then just sort of continued in some of the beds, so that there was little or nothing left to clean up in most of them. I do have things left to do, don’t get me wrong—there is one island bed in our back yard that looks like I didn’t touch it (no peonies or irises in there), and then just the odd bunch of something or other here and there in some of the other gardens. So it probably won’t take me more than an hour or two—and then I’ll be all ready for new growth (which has started everywhere already, of course, even without my go-ahead).
So I’m really hoping for some decent weather soon. . . I want to get my potatoes in and my “zinnia trial” seeds planted. The yard will look pretty good once I’ve finished cleanup–what with the fence all fixed up and the daffodils blooming. Also, the tulips are starting to bloom everywhere—here’s a shot of one of my ‘Rembrandt’ tulips.
Rembrandt tulip
Here’s hoping for some REAL spring weather very soon!! 
