First customer of the year

I took a little drive to Spencerville a couple of weeks ago, to pick up some shrubs from Riverview Native Nursery. With the erratic weather, part of me wanted to GET GOING, while the saner part of my brain reminded me it was not even April yet. But by purchasing these shrubs early, I got the pick of the crop (so to speak).

It's impossible to tell from the photo that I have a smooth hydrangea, a chokeberry, and a spicebush.

Last summer I whacked away at the forsythia, cutting two to the ground, leaving one for early spring yellow. I assumed the scanty blossoming was due to the severe pruning, but as I drive around town, no one's forsythia looks good this year. I blame the weather.

Daffodils rarely fail, although they may flop a bit. The blooming rate is random, too, instead of the usual steady march through the varieties.

Gardening rarely lacks surprises, but I feel like I can't count on anything anymore.

Spending my children's inheritance

Oh, my goodness, where do I begin? I've started ordering plants and seeds for the coming season. In at least one case, the shipping charges exceed the amount of the order. After a lifetime of scrimping and saving for retirement, I want what I want and I'm going to get what I want.

The vegetable garden is basically all planned out, and it's not going to have many vegetables. Instead, I am going to cross over to growing plants for dyeing fiber. There will still be asparagus, strawberries, and raspberries, plus pole beans, zukes and cukes, and broccoli (which I've discovered is rather long-seasoned as one can enjoy side shoots for many weeks after the main head is harvested). I expect to have some tomatoes and peppers and herbs in pots. But otherwise, it will be dye plants.

Most dye plants that will grow around here yield primarily greens and yellows, not my favorite colors for fiber. But with certain mordants and after dye baths, one can obtain a variety of other colors from the following plants: dahlia ('Black Satin'), hibiscus (Hibiscus Moscheutos 'Luna Red'), hollyhock (Alcea rosea), madder (Rubia tinctorum), yellow cosmos (Cosmos sulphureus), dyer's coreopsis (Coreopsis tinctoria), dyer's knotweed (Polygonum tinctorium). Of all of these, I have grown only hollyhocks and hibiscus; the rest will be new to me.

Other dyes may be obtained from plants and trees I already grow: marigolds, apple trees (bark), cherry trees (bark), elm (bark), goldenrod, rhubarb (also a mordant), daffodils, Queen Anne's lace (I don't grow this on purpose), yarrow, even dead tomato plants. Once I exhaust myself sampling all these, I may just go back to vegetables!

In the non-vegetable, non-fruit, non-dyeing realm, I'm going to concentrate on adding more trees and shrubs to the rest of the landscape, Specific shrubs are black chokeberry (to replace the one that died from rabbit girdling), smooth hydrangea, coralberry, and spicebush. I can purchase all these from a local grower, Riverview Native Plant Nursery. For trees, I want a Prairie Fire crabapple for the backyard and a 'Perfect Purple' crabapple for the front.

And to make everything look pretty, I'm considering a power edger of some sort.

What are your plans for the coming season?