My Half Acre of Paradise

Yesterday evening, I drilled four holes in my chlorotic maple and inserted Medicap FE iron supplements. The tree is leafing, although not as thickly as the two healthy ones. Last August, I injected a lot of EDDHA iron into the soil around the tree with my root feeder watering device. I think that helped; the leaves appear to be as green as the two healthy trees, but just to be sure, I did the implants after asking on GardenWeb about whether it’s possible to overdose it on iron. Sounds like it’ll be safe, so I went ahead and did it.

My lawn has been very dry this month, and after greening up earlier in the month, it’s started getting brown spots again. I decided to turn on the lawn sprinklers last Friday evening. I gave it a full cycle for the lawn and the front flowerbed and then turned the system off.

Before I use the drip lines, I have to repair a section of line that I accidentally melted when I burned a pile of tree limbs last week! I also need to inspect all the drippers and see if any other repairs are needed.

My Grape Hyacinths (Muscari) are blooming now. This year, I was concerned that all I was seeing from the Muscari was a tousled mass of leaves flopping around. But all of a sudden a week or so ago, the flower spikes just jumped up. They actually keep getting better every year, spreading a little and become a little more vigorous with slightly taller, thicker flower spikes.

Here’s my Granny Smith Apple tree in full bloom, or pretty close to peak. What a great tree!

Also, here are some blooms on one of my Kwanzan Cherry trees. I uploaded this one with a smaller thumbnail size, but as with the others, you can click on it to see the larger photo.

I thought this photo was so cool it deserved more than a thumbnail. I love this tree! Everything about it is great — the way it looks, the amount of apples it produces, the wonderful flavor of the Granny Smith apples, everything. My favorite things in the garden are the fruit bearers — apples, cherries, strawberries, raspberries, and nectarines. This is what it’s all about.

My cherry trees are past the peak of blooms, but the flowering cherry shrubs are still building up to their maximum bloom. This is from one of the shrubs. The Kwanzan cherry trees (ornamental flowering trees) are also building up to their peak right now. I’ll take a photo this week.

The forsythia is passing its peak bloom but still looking pretty good. This is a great shrub. Its early color is always such a welcome sight.

I’m happy to report that my Rocky Mountain Maple baby made it through the winter. This is a native maple with nice red foliage in the fall. I raised it from seed last year — it was the only seed of maybe 20 that sprouted. I collected the seeds from trees up American Fork Canyon.

It’s still small, but it’s looking like it’s getting off to a vigorous start for this year!

My Vinca minor is blooming pretty well now. I need to get in that area and weed out some grass and weeds real soon, but at a close-up level like this it looks pretty good.

I transplanted some of the creeping phlox from my front yard to the back last year, and it’s doing well and spreading now. I wish all of these groundcovers would bloom for a longer season!

This is Candytuft, or Iberis sempervirens. It was slow to take hold in this area, but after four years, it finally started spreading well last year. The deer nibble on it in the winter, but it still seems to create flowerbuds fine in the spring.

Last fall, I planted an unknown mix of tulips that I got from the final clearance sale of Thanksgiving Point’s tulip bulbs. They were just in baskets, without any sorting of the bulbs for color or flower form, and since it was the last day, I got something like 200 bulbs (including daffodils) for $10. I should count and see how many flowers I actually got, because I wonder how many of the 200 didn’t work. They were the small leftovers, so they weren’t in the best shape.

Anyway, I also planted these pansies in the fall. I don’t know why pansy means weakling, because these flowers are tough! They live under the snow and through -7 degree weather and come back in late winter with awesome color. They make a nice cover under the tulips. Here are some more photos of some of the tulips. A few are quite unusual varieties, like these yellow ones. Normally, I’d prefer to plant tulips in bunches of similar colors, but I think this mixed bed doesn’t look too bad.

This should be a warning for me next time we have warm spring weather, and I’m tempted to plant tender things outside before their time: 

The KSL weather guy is calling it “weather whiplash” and it is surprising how cold it has gotten after last week’s heat! We had temps in the high 60s and even 70 last week; then it rained and cooled on Sunday, and then we got snow flurries and highs in the 40s yesterday and today. I hope it doesn’t hurt my nectarine and cherry fruit — the trees have been blossoming for about a week now. My apples are nearly blossoming, so they should be OK.

My forsythia and flowering plum blossoms are starting to decline, and leaves are coming out pretty well. There are a few blossoms on the flowering cherry shrubs in the front yard, but not much yet. Hopefully the cold doesn’t kill those blossoms. I can also see that my crabapples are close to flowering, but they’ll hold off a little longer, I think.

My tulips and daffodils are doing great! I need to take a few photos and post them here.

Our baby boy was born on April 6th. What a blessing! This photo is so cute, even though it has those medical devices attached to him. He’s OK, but he needed a little monitoring at first because of low blood sugar.