Monday Miscellany

I've been in the garden cleaning things up for the past week. After a day off yesterday because of an unexpected snow, I should finish up the bulk of the work today. I've been collecting little tidbits as I went, so here are a few of them collected.

Starting with my gravel beds. This green santolina has done surprisingly well here, and stays evergreen. So nice!

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The surprising thing is that this bed is hollow underneath!

Or at least partially so. I'm not sure if this is because a mole went through here, or if it's voles.

There is a lot of empty space below though, which I just collapsed with a stick and then filled with more pea gravel:

This other bed doesn't appear to have much of a problem except for a few deer footprints...

...but some exploratory poking indicates that there are tunnels here too.

Which got filled with gravel as well.

I wish I would have discovered this in the fall, as it might explain why some of these plants did not survive the winter.


Moving on to the nearby Knockout rose...

...it appears to me to have rose rosette disease. Not enough new growth to see witches brooms, but those thorns are so dense it's not right.

I'll be digging this out soon it seems. At least I'll be able to get to the water spigot more easily now.



On happier news I thought this Mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum) had died:

It went dormant over the summer -- as they do apparently -- before I could plant it, so it was just a pot of soil for several months.

Glad to see that it lives!



Also glad to see this Mukdenia rossii 'Karasuba' made it through the winter. I had no idea what to expect, but it went from this a few weeks ago...

...to small blooms now...

...and gorgeous foliage:

So nice! It's fun and exciting seeing what new (last year) plants do in their first spring in my garden!



I'm hoping to post a lot of bamboo-focused "before and after" photos tomorrow, but we'll see...

So glad that the cleanup is almost finished!

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