Kate Forrest

Author

Green Fog & Spring Green

Week 7 in the Garden

April 13, 2021

by Kate Forrest

“Spring is the time of plans and projects.”
— Leo Tolstoy

Pollen

It’s tree pollen season in the tidewater and there is pollen on literally everything. It’s so tempting to open the doors and windows on these pleasant spring days, but I get a quick reminder of why I need to hold off after I feed the birds and track pollen onto the kitchen floor. I blame the pines, which is the most obvious source in our neighborhood, as all the pines are covered in yellow clusters of pollen cones, but there are other culprits in the woods. Thankfully, we’re not allergic to tree pollen, but it makes everything such a mess. Our deck, lawn furniture, and even the plants are coated in pollen right now. When we were out working in the yard over the weekend, we saw big blooms of it blowing down the street. When a spring breeze blows through the trees, the pollen falls like dust cloud from the branches. We experienced it for the first time when we moved to North Carolina back in 2017. I was warned by a friend of the “green fog” we’d have to deal with every spring for a few weeks. As someone born and raised in Western Pennsylvania, I’d never seen anything like it and after nearly four years living in the south, it’s still a novel nuisance to me.

Asides from tree pollen, the most noticeable thing going on out-of-doors is all the glorious spring green. The tree canopy is once again covered in brilliant shades of new green. Not all the trees have jumped on the bandwagon, but even our willow oak has leaf shoots on the ready, so spring is very much giving way to summer in the tidewater. Our tulips and daffodils are spent, with just a few hyacinths hanging on. The pansies and violas are still kicking, but all get wilted on our occasional 80-degree days. Thankfully, this coming weekend is serving us with some 60-degree weather and partly cloudy days—dream conditions for yard work.

We’re doing another big project this weekend: building our first terraced bed in the backyard. The fenced in area of our backyard is a blank slate in terms of landscaping. We have some trees, but nothing going on asides from our chiminea fire pit area. The back 1/3 of the yard is hill-sloped and we’ve noticed some erosion issues over the last two years so we brainstormed ways to manage it and came up with adding some terraced beds. This weekend we’ll be starting with a 15-ft by 5 to 6-ft deep bed. We’re getting another 62 retaining wall blocks delivered on Thursday and I can’t wait to tackle that project.

But before I get ahead of myself, let me recap everything that’s happened over the last week.

Plant Haul

Last Tuesday, we did a big plant haul and, as promised, I’ll recap all our purchases here.

We started at Jamestown Feed & Seed and acquired:

  • Henryi Clematis *My first ever clematis. I am so excited!!!
  • 3 Lavandula X Intermedia Phenomenal
  • Lettuce (Simpson Elite)
  • Onions: Bunched & Candy

I also eyed up another viburnum but resisted.

From there we went to Ulster American Homestead Garden Center and picked up:

  • 3 Surdiva White Improved *A heat tolerant annual I’ve never tried before
  • 10 Lucky Yellow Lantanas
  • 2 more Lavandula Phenomenal
  • 3 Lemon Grass

Finally, we stopped at Lowes to get another Leyland Cypress to finish our screen wall and we also picked up two creeping jenny vines and some plants from the “half-dead” section. Our rescues included:

  • Macho Fern
  • Selenia Light Yellow Begonia
  • Golden Moneywort (which looks a whole bunch like creeping jenny)

A week later, everyone is still alive, and all the rescues have new growth.

Wednesday in the yard

Planter I stenciled.

Planter I stenciled.

Wednesday afternoon we finished staining our deck. We finished 90% of it last May, but just never finished one section of railing. We had the perfect weather to knock it out and I’m so glad we got it in before the “Green Fog” hit this week. I also dabbled in some arts and crafts by stenciling bees onto two new black planters I got for hostas. I used white Rust-Oleum paint (from a can) and made a bit of a mess using the stencil on a curved surface, so I spent a good hour touching everything up by hand with a small paintbrush. After it dried, I sprayed a clear coat of Rust-Oleum on to seal it. I love the end result, so I think it was worth the time and effort. And, after being rained on three times since then, it’s holding up to the weather.

We also planted out our onions into the raised beds and my husband moved a massive leaf pile from our side yard into the backyard where we’re building a border between us and the woods to help drive down our tick population and, believe it or not, the natural border seems to be helping with the ticks.

A Walk in CW

Tulips at Lightfoot Tenement.

Tulips at Lightfoot Tenement.

We finished the day with a leisurely stroll through some of the gardens at Colonial Williamsburg. It is such a wonderful source of inspiration, so I love going and seeing the weekly changes as gardens transform from spring to summer beds in just a matter of weeks. I was excited to see irises and columbine already in bloom there. Unfortunately, the showstopper wisteria at the Spa was dramatically cutback this winter, so it isn’t putting on a floral display this season. I’m sure the new vines will give way to more productive flowering in the coming years, but I do miss seeing it this year.

I was particularly impressed with the new border beds on the walkway created by the new Arts museum entrance—large swaths of daffodils still in bloom with irises and peonies promising more to come. The highlight of the evening though was the gorgeous display of tulips at the Lightfoot Tenement. As always, it was a delightful, inspiring walk and it makes me ever appreciative that we’re learning to garden in Williamsburg.

Storms

Friday night we had some amazing thunderstorms, which I have a love-hate relationship with. I love to watch the clouds and lightning and listen to the rain, but unfortunately, it’s a major migraine trigger for me. Despite taking my medicine, I still got sick and had a postdrome to contend with Saturday, so we pushed yardwork to Sunday.

Lavender for days

Sunday we were back in action and ready to complete our lavender border along the driveway. We finished clearing the border and found an old Coca-Cola bottle cap, but thankfully no more fish hooks like the last time we were out digging in the yard. If that doesn’t make ya wary of digging in the soil with your hands, I don’t know what will.

We added some of our sandy topsoil to the border and planted out our five new lavenders, then we got that mulched in. It was hot and sunny and the tree pollen was so high it kept coating our reusable water bottles, so we decided to take a break for a few hours. Around 6:00 PM, we went back out. I potted up our strawberry plant into a hanging basket and we hung it by our raised beds. We also planted out our new Daring Deception Daylilies (I just got them in the mail Saturday from Gilbert H. Wild & Son) into the pear tree bed. With an hour of daylight to go, we also cut down a few sections of our dying redtip trees on the northern boundary of our property. It will probably be an effort continued over the course of the summer, because the trees are already leafed out and have a considerable canopy, so that’s a lot of limbs and brush to cut down and process, so to speak, so it’s going to take the two of us awhile to get that all done. But it’s a start and I’m glad we’re finally working on those trees.

Seed Tray Update

  • Zinnias shot up within four days of being sown (on 4/8); now have germination on over 30 seeds.
  • Bells or Ireland—just got one shoot today!
  • Salvia, phlox, Mexican Feather Grass, and coleus are still growing, but it’s slow going on all of them.
  • Three Jalapeños germinated and all look healthy.

What’s blooming in our yard?

  • Buttercups
  • Hyacinths
  • Violas
  • Pansies
  • Lenten Roses
  • Weeping redbud
  • Dogwood
  • Heuchera

What’s blooming in Williamsburg?

Wisteria.

Wisteria.

  • All of the above and:
  • Wisteria is in its glory
  • Azaleas
  • Irises are starting
  • Daffodils
  • Tulips
  • Columbine
  • Anemones

What’s doing in our yard?

  • Green fog (aka, tree pollen) is everywhere.
  • Trumpet vine is budded and getting ready to flower.

    *We haven’t seen them yet, but someone posted on Nextdoor that the hummingbirds are back in town! I have a feeling we’ll see them as soon as that trumpet vine flowers.
  • Our grape vine is leafing out and growing its curtain.
  • Our perennial fern (I honestly don’t think it has a special name) is fully open.
  • All our herbs are doing fantastic—from the mint collection to the parsley, thyme, chives, and rosemary (which is much happier in its home of the raised bed).
  • The peas are now six to eight inches tall and several have latched onto their support strings—so exciting!
  • All the kale in our top-of-the-railing planter got dug up by the squirrels; the transplanted kale in the raised bed is getting burnt out. I hope it can survive until it thrives in the shade of the peas as they grow.
  • The alyssum and forget-me-nots in the pear tree bed have germinated! We saw some tiny shoots tonight on our evening inspection of the yard.
  • Perennial Lantana’s growth has doubled over the last week.
  • Knockout rose has flower buds.
  • One Forsythia cutting we took from our neighbor last year survived the winter. It’s a leafed-out one-foot-tall stick that we’ve potted up until we decide where to place it permanently.
  • Poppies are nearly an inch tall. I started thinning them.
  • All three of our bare-root bleeding hearts have turned into proper plants.
  • Last, but not least, the fireflies are out and about!!

Well, folks, that’s a wrap on this week. Excited to share our terraced bed endeavors next week. Once we get that bed established, we’ll also be able to plant out a ton of stuff that’s been hanging out in the greenhouse to protect it from meddlesome squirrels. The astilbes, hostas, ferns, and bleeding hearts will hopefully be put in their permanent homes this weekend. Then I’ll just need to care for our tender plants (like the lemon tree, pineapple plant, annual lantanas, and clematis). I anticipate releasing everything into the wild, so to speak, come May.

Thank you for reading and following along on our gardening adventures. Have a good week and happy gardening to my fellow gardeners!

~Kate