Good morning, and it's here! Welcome to Saturday Morning Garden Blogging.
Denver has turned the corner into the warm-weather planting season. Yesterday morning the lows were in the upper 40s, and the afternoon high was 76°.
For the weekend it gets even better — highs touching 80° and continued mild temperatures overnight. A bit of cloud cover means it's comfortable working outside, and with the lilac and daphne in bloom the yard smells wonderful.
May in Denver — once we get past the cruisers on Cinco de Mayo — is wondrous.
It's very interesting to watch the seasons change from a Denver high rise. Our office is on the southeast corner of the Cash Register building and provides a fine overview of the city.
Because of the view to the east and south, and because I go to work very early and I'm there for the sunrise throughout the year, it's very easy to track the changing position of the sun as the year progresses from winter, through spring and into summer, then back through fall to winter.
In full winter, I cannot see the sun break the horizon — it's hidden behind a church to the south east. But, as we progress to spring, somewhere in late February or early March I can see it come up through the BossMan's corner office windows.
Then it seems the sun races north, appearing through the next bank of windows to the north in early April and, by the end of the month, finally blasting through our northern-most office. It happens so quickly, the move from the invisible sunrise in the dead of winter, to the brilliant blasts directly into the office by April.
Spring floats slowly up from the ground. The early action — blooming bulbs and greening grass — is too low and individualistic to be visible from on high. But in the first week or two of May, a light green mist appears to drift up from the ground to the tree tops. It's a delicately beautiful phenomena and short lived, a watercolor wash between our office windows to the city below.
And when the green mist rises, it's time to head out to plant the warm weather crops and tender annuals.
Yesterday I was again lucky enough to have an extra day off (and lucky enough to have a BossMan who doesn't insist that the support staff sit around and twiddle our thumbs if our help isn't needed). I spent the day getting the soaker hoses arranged, and planting the tomatoes, eggplants and peppers the Mister and I had bought on Wednesday, then mulching them in with the bales of straw we'd also picked up. Because it is on the early side, I'm planning on putting wall-o-waters around the plants until the end of May to give them a good, warm head start.
The snap peas are already blooming, so I'll likely have peas by late May. I interplanted the rest of the brassicas with the pea vines; they're big enough to not be over-shadowed and, by the time they need more room, the peas will be gone.
Oh, it was a glorious gardening day — warm, but with some cloud cover so it didn't get too hot; Grateful Dead blasting on the iPod, and the rich scent of daphne and lilac.
I also hauled the begonias and seedlings I had under the metal halide light up from the basement to the back yard, so they can begin hardening off before finding their final homes.
Today and tomorrow I'll finish laying the soaker hose, plant the herbs, plug gladiolus bulbs in the ground, haul the dahlia tubers from the basement, and clear off the front porch. The Mister is going to install a hanging rail for the fuchsias back from the edge of the porch so where they won't get too much sun. And it's time for the brugmansias to go outside.
That's what's happening here. What's going on in you garden?