From the

AHS President

With best wishes,

Mary Collier Fisher

AHS President

Today was a good kind of tired.  The best kind.  I am sure you gardeners know what I mean....when you work so hard that you could drop, yet love every minute of it!

We northern gardeners have impatiently waited for spring this year.

Sure, we enjoy the first snowflakes of winter wonderland, and then we comfort ourselves with the knowledge that all this winter snow is a "good thing" for our gardens, as Martha Stewart would say.  It blankets our gardens as a winter mulch.  And it looks beautiful!  We welcome the sight of clean pristine white land, and we don't have to look at the barren ground where our garden so beautifully stood last year.

But by March we have had enough of this winter wonderland, and are raring to get outside.  Out of the confines of our house.  Out in the sunshine.  Out in the soil.  Out in our gardens.  Out with our beloved plant collections.  Out getting our hands covered in garden dirt!   And daylily dreaming!

Darwin hybrid'Golden Parade' tulips and blue Muscari complement the newly planted forsythia

Just as long as we are out in our gardens, who cares if there's mundane  garden work to be done?  Stick those frost-heaved labels back in the ground?  No problem.  Pull off  last year's dead scapes, ratty foliage, and  blown-around tree leaves?  Will do!  Push those wheelbarrows around?  Easy, peasy!  It is spring and we gardeners love the feel of soil, love the smell, and love watching all the fresh plant growth.  What has survived? What has put on new growth?  Aha!  Look at that!  And we so anticipate this year's blooms!

Usually in March I indulge myself in my own gardens for one very cherished month before working out on the estates.  With my garden helper, we tend to my one acre of gardens. We clean, transplant, label, burn brush, top dress beds, and dig and pot up hundreds of pots of perennials as well as daylilies.  Working in my own garden nourishes me by seeing what I have created over the past 20 years.  It is a pleasure that I don't often have time to enjoy during the height of our gardening season.

This did not happen this year though, nor last, come to think of it.  For me, this spring has been an agonizing wait. March has been like viewing the world from inside a window looking out.  Yearning to be outside, and impatiently waiting.  This March was the second worst rainy month in years. Floods, non-hurricanes with sustained winds of 68 miles per hour and 90 mph gusts brought down 100-year-old trees all over Cape Ann (north of Boston).  More rains.  And then again, even more rains.  And floods and sopping wet lands.  Every day I have looked out my windows waiting for the rains to stop and the sun to appear and the temperatures to rise. I want to get out in my gardens. I want the gardening season to start.

I should back up and explain a little though.  With anticipation of all the spring work, I always clean my gardens, and all the estates that I work on, quite heavily in the fall. All gardens are cut back and cleaned of debris. All leaves are raked.  All landscape work that can be done, is done.  In general, I do not plant plants that need tender loving care.  "Be Hardy or Be Gone" has become my motto!  That works not only on the estates, but here in my home garden where I challenge and evaluate plants. I do not winter mulch. 

Old fragrant magnolia found on the property

Well, finally, spring has sprung in this year 2010,  on April 1.  I saw some sunshine with the forecast of more.  But my beds still needed to drain from all these rains before working.  Luckily with sandy soil and sloping landscape I was able to start work today, April 2.  I awoke with high anticipation.

Today did not disappoint.  My helper showed up early and we were both eager!  Let's get out there!  Out there in the sunshine. Out there in the soil. Out there looking at all the plants emerging. Out there getting our hands dirty!

Between the two of us, we quickly picked up tree debris, spring-cleaned the front island bed, the two middle beds, and the herb gardens.  We transplanted some plants, grubbed out the forever-running old plantings of Hemerocallis fulva in one garden, raked the front lawn and driveway, and stuck all the labels in the formal daylily beds.

It was heavenly being out in the gardens again!  And I didn't want to stop. But alas, the winter's sleepy body said that I had done enough.  "What can you expect of me for one day?  Your body is tired."

But in such a wonderful way!  It is a good kind of tired.

BB

Bobbie Brooks - Gloucester, Ma

Website - http://www.distinctivegardendesigns.com/

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