Good morning, and let's share. Welcome to Saturday Morning Garden Blogging.
Denver's weather has been unremarkable for early February for the past week. The first half was on the cool-and-cloudy side, with lows hovering around freezing, and the lows dipped down toward zero one night. Over Sunday and Monday we got a couple of inches of snow, but not enough to cause any excitement. The week ahead is forecast for a repeat — chance of snow over the weekend, and warming a bit towards the end of the week.
Today's hyacinth vase is Missy's Brother's payment of his bet that I couldn't repeat the 7:00:00 Mountain Time posting time during December last year (yes, I could — several times). This one is of Victorian vintage and, because it came from a garden blogging regular, it is especially precious to me. Which brings us to today's festivities: giving what we have, and receiving garden treasures from others. It's really wonderful to to be working outside in the spring and see the plantings I've received from garden bloggers come alive each year.
If you're like me, you get those stacks of garden porn in your mailbox and end up ordering more seeds than you could possibly ever plant — after all, they're only a couple of bucks, right? And then the seed companies send you bonuses or friends pick up packs of seeds they think you may like, and soon you have mountains of seed packages that have been hanging around for years. But you feel guilty about just throwing them away.
Then there are the plants — plants that spread; plants that are dug and preserved for the next growing season and get bigger each year; plants that you "collect" and soon your collection outstrips your space.
I've already mailed out my excess seeds, but I do have a few things that I can ship out starting in March. The pictured asters spread everywhere — last year I took a mass of it with me to New York and shared it with the East Coast contingent (BJM, how did it take?). Every fall and every spring I pull great masses of the stuff. It's very hardy, but needs to be planted in a fairly sunny spot so the shortening late-summer days can trigger its blooming cycle.
I also have a couple of types of cranesbill to share: the pictured Johnson's Blue self-seeds, so I've patches of it that need to be reduced. It likes sun, grows to be about 18" tall with nodding blooms, and will repeat bloom if whacked back after it's first blooming cycle. I also have a lower-growing fuchsia pink cranesbill that spreads — it will get to about 12" high. It likes sun but will tolerate light shade.
And down in cold storage, I've bags and bags of dahlia tubers and gladiola bulbs — as I have more varieties of dahlias and glads ordered, I'll need to thin my current stock to have room for everything.
As for what I need? Well, I'd really like to get a good patch of lily of the valley established. I know a lot of you bitch about having too much of it — care to send any my way?
That's what's happening here. What's going on in your gardens?