The First Day of Spring

As well as being the spring equinox, today was also a sunny day with a light breeze which was a potent invitation to get outside and continue with the spring clean of the garden beds. Splashes of yellow are starting to appear in my garden.

The rhubarb popped through just a few days ago so while I was outside today I took a few minutes to add some fertilizer to improve the crop this year.

Here is my second rhubarb plant (above) and I show it now with the birdbath for scale. Let's see how well it grows this year.

The plum tree is just bursting out into bloom. And one of the days tasks was taking down the hessian windbreak that I had up for protection of the fall planted boxwoods.

I continued cleaning up the top bed. At peak bloom this has a lot of echinacea with a few heliopsis (if the rabbits leave them alone) and Russian sage. To the left are a couple of bridal veil spirea which are just beginning to come into leaf. And the straw colored plant is New England asters which I cut down after taking the photo.

Some creature is tunneling in the rear of this garden area. You can perhaps see the upheaval in the grass. It drives the dog crazy when he goes out in the morning as there is a lot of new smell to investigate.

Earlier in the week I started the job of cutting back the liriope beside the front walk. Here you can see how bedraggled it was after the winter but that is all gone now. Behind that I had already cut back the chrysanthemums.

This was officially the first daffodil out in my garden this season on March 18.

And not to be outdone - another first splash of yellow is the faithful dandelion!

I'm looking forward to another good year in my garden.