January 27 in the Garden

 The Spring has arrived early this year.  For the last 10 days we have been having about 8-11 degree high temperatures and light frost at night.  This epimedium is showing some very nice color.  I have 3 epimediums doing fairly well in the moss garden at the back. 

 The first of the polyanthus plants to show some color in the the moss garden.  The polys border the stepping stone path.  As you can see they need the winter leaf mulch cleaned away and perhaps a bit of compost added.  

 the snowdrops are up, of course,  in several spots around the garden.  

 a lovely maeve crocus.  The crocuses in the bed next to the crocus field, in the front boulevard garden seem to be the first ones to be up.

 The yellow crocuses are the first ones up in the crocus field.  After about 4 days of warmer weather there are now more of the yellow crocuses showing.
People have been driving along edge of the grass by the street in front of the crocus field and making a muddy mess.  It is raining today.  Hopefully not too much of the mud will wash down the storm drain up the street.

 I have been cleaning up in the woodland.  Have cut the firethorn back and sent it out in the compost bin.  I have cleaned up a bit of the Japanese cedar.  Its bottom branches on the inside nearest the trunk go dry and brown.  I have most of this cleaned up and far as I can reach. This lets in more light and rain to the understory plants.  I clipped back the mock orange; which is doing very well, and has buds and is fragrant.  I cleaned up the big fern.  It has some very good humousy soil around it.  There is about a half a bin of good compost in the old compost bin at the back of the garage.  I have been digging out blue bells for 4 days, during this clean up of the woodland.  Between the smothering them with leaves and digging them out, I think I am slowly winning this battle of the blue bells.  I am up to the water feature in the woodland in this process. I hope I have not killed the fawn lilies with all this digging.   The next step will be controlling all the species crocus, saxatilis, that have spread like crazy along the woodland strip from the firethorn to the water feature.  There are tall bearded irises growing in this area also.  I will need to dig them out and replenish the soil, and put the better ones back in again.  Or perhaps get a few new ones.  I have clipped back the Germander that grows in front of the yew year and over to the firethorn.  It too needs a bit more clipping.  This photo shows the old side walk covered in its moss for the winter.  At the woodland  end of the sidewalk I have dug out some of the germander and set the big white pot containing perennials here, as a focal point in looking along the sidewalk.  There will be another big white pot with perennials at the patio area end of the sidewalk,   This is the before picture.  I have finished setting up the white pots and taken an after picture, to follow. . .   Perhaps the  perennials will make a good showing to add to this vignette, in the summer and fall.  I hope to get some more interesting plants into the small bed behind the old garage.  I will need to move the blocks of wood into the garage on to the wood pile.  

The photo above is from Gonzales Hill, Walbran Park, where the rocks are wonderfully lichened and mossy.  This little rock fern will be gone for the summer, but is at its very best now.  The rock fern in my garden really needs to be growing out of a rock crevice like this.  Maybe I can set up some of my golden rocks near it to let it spread into a crevice higher up from the ground level in the moss garden where it is now.  Maybe pictures to follow of this notion, too.