Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Gardening Stuff - I tried

There are some forsythia bushes along our sidewalk, which I may have mentioned here before. Sadly, they've never bloomed well that I recall, because we live in a condo complex, and the management hires the lawn care out to some folks who - when it comes to shrubs - have no clue. Everything gets the same treatment - a good serious pruning every winter. Take a few inches (or more) off the top, ignore the overgrown mass in the middle. Treat it all like a hedge. Not the thing to do if you want your forsythia to look like the gigantic bright-yellow balls of happiness that they can be. They have to be pruned after they bloom, otherwise the pruning takes the potential blooms off.



So, when the annual newsletter in December mentioned the pruning, I took some action. I emailed the management company and asked them to tell the grounds guys to not prune the forsythia. Lo and behold, they listened. The forsythias look nice and gangly, and were on track to be nice yellow bits of brightness in a gloomy spring.



Except that it's been uncommonly warm lately - the high yesterday was 68. And things were starting to attempt to bud out. Which would have been fine, if it hadn't been for the cold front yesterday, which gave us a low last night of 20. Yep, a 50-degree drop in about 12 hours. And now, I'm just hoping that the forsythia are more cold-hardy than I think, and weren't far enough along that this will squash them for the year.

I ran out last night after the 10:00 weather and clipped off a few foot-long sections, hoping to force them if nothing else. Only one of them looks like it has buds, though, so I have some more hope for the bushes themselves. I meant to go look at them today, but didn't get a chance.

Hope, hope.

I may have to write the management company again. I'm thinking of suggesting that they get some sort of list or map of what shrubs and perennials are here, and do a little more focused job of the pruning and care. Things like pruning times, dividing hostas, etc. Not sure how it'll go over, since it'll probably not be cheap. On the other hand, the county Extension has a Master Gardener program, and possibly someone might take this on as a project.

Then there's the indoor gardening. You can tell it's the end of winter.

My poor sad purple oxalis looks like toast. The green oxalis look better, so I'm not sure what's wrong.



One of my presumed Christmas Cactus has decided to put out one single bloom. No other buds. Given the unusual shape of the sections, I'm wondering if this one is an Easter Cactus instead.



And I managed to break a clay saucer, just by picking it up. Not sure how that happened, I've never seen it before, in a saucer that hadn't been dropped or stressed.

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