Waiting for the garbage men

I am anxiously anticipating the trash pick up. I put out 4 of those big paper landscaping waste bags full of ivy and now the rain seems to be picking up. The garbage men usually come at mid-morning so I hope it all will last. I also believe that you can put out yard waste just in clearly marked bags, not in the tightly sealed cans, as the city requires for other garbage. They do say on the Baltimore City web site that there are no volume limits for yard waste, which is good because I have a lot out there.

I was particularly anxious to do a number on the yard because the neighborhood rat has been spotted again and I wanted to remove anything that might attract it (or them). This winter in particular has left a mess behind in my yard. The ivy fell over, branches broke off, and everything just looked terrible.

As shown in the photo, the wind and rain are pushing over my daffodils. Oh, well, I assume they’ll be all right after the rain leaves and the sun comes out. Yesterday I wrote an article about how to care for spring bulbs and I mentioned staking them. I did think of doing that to my own daffodils but the weather is supposed to improve soon.

While I was waiting for Blogger to settle out so I could post this, they came and took all of my bags of ivy. Hampden garbage men are the best!

Drowning in Ivy

I keep thinking it is too early to do any real work in the garden, especially since it went down into the 20s here last night. I went out to putter around this afternoon and ended up doing major clean up. I even stopped to walk up to Giant to get some of those gigantic paper bags. Yes, I do have a compost pile, but I needed the bags for piles and piles of English ivy, which is everywhere in my yard. I pruned and pruned and pruned. Then I pruned some more. It all looks much better now. After I cleaned up I mowed the lawn for the first time this season and the whole place looks much improved.

When I was out there I was even more convinced that my new goals for the garden are the best thing. I have a small yard and in the spring I work the vegetables in around the spring bulbs and then eventually remove the bulbs. Now I can leave the bulbs in place, which will be much less work.

Hyacinths and City Hall

I was putting out my recycling yesterday when I noticed a blooming white hyacinth in my yard. It puzzled me, but then I remembered that a student gave one to me last spring. It was potted and I saved the bulb and must have mixed it in with the daffodils. I spotted these hot pink ones when I was walking home from work yesterday. There are near a building in Remington that Hopkins uses, I think, for facilities management. Nice guys work there.

I’m trying to do my latest Examiner article but there is a problem with the photo upload tool. This is aggravating because part of my strategy is to have colorful, pretty, eye catching photos to draw people in. I’m just writing about this weekend's events, though.

Speaking of that, I was pleased that the City Hall garden is going to be up and running again. With the recent turmoil surrounding Sheila Dixon, my main worry was if the garden would continue. I was down there a lot last summer and really enjoying photographing it and writing about it. The June article has a slideshow that I particularly enjoyed making.

Wordless Wednesday - Last Year's Cherry Blossoms

(Yes, today I wrote about the upcoming festival.)

Daffodils and a Garden Plan‏

I have not finished planning my garden this year. I know, I know, everyone else has done this already. But, there were a few things I was thinking over and waiting out. I have to reconfigure things a bit because of a new shady area. But, that is not bad because the now shady spot was once a scorchingly sunny area where my plants often dried out. This year, I'm going to have bright shade tolerant flowers in that area, like impatiens. I decided to grow mostly flowers and herbs. Last year my vegetables did not produce the way I'd like them to and I think I'm going to give that a rest for this year and only grow pleasurable things. I'm going to get seeds for tall heirloom flowers and I will also wind morning glories around my bean poles. With my square foot vegetable bed, I might reconfigure it in the a more traditional herb garden design, with some kind of round shapes.

Just after I did a lame "What's blooming in Baltimore?" post for March, flowers are suddenly out everywhere. I've seen flowering trees, iris, and am starting to see zillions of daffodils. The tulip poplars look like they are emerging. These daffodils are behind the Rotunda, up against one of those little buildings back there.

That Elusive Delmarva Fox Squirrel

I’m sure I’m going to tell you lots of squirrel stories as I write this blog. In my neighborhood we are blessed/cursed with the common gray squirrel, which is cute but can be destructive. I am more enamored with the Delmarva fox squirrel, which my friend and I have had brushes with on the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge.

The first time I went there I read about this squirrel in the visitor’s center. Oh, they are shy, retiring, hard to spot and endangered. People we knew had been coming to Chincoteague for years never saw one. Well, yes, we saw one, on that very trip. As we made one last trip through the wildlife loop before driving back to Baltimore, there he was! The elusive Delmarva Fox squirrel was sitting on the side of the road and sunning himself. Well, since we were leaving the cameras were packed and by the time we finished our fumbling he was gone.

This squirrel, though shy and retiring, likes to sit by the road and taunt passers by. We saw them on subsequent trips, but they always ran just out of camera range. In fact, most of my pictures of them show them streaking away. But, one day last fall this squirrel decided to pose for me, and in range of my zoom lens.

So, that is what prompted me to write “Types of squirrels found in Maryland”. I was just curious about the Delmarva Fox Squirrel in particular. It was also interesting to see that we have gray, red and flying squirrels in Maryland as well.

Next, I’m going to write an article about deterring them as pests, which is less romantic but more practical.

What the heck is hellebore?

Even though I’ve been gardening since I was a kid, a plant I’ve never heard of will suddenly emerge in my life and then seem like it is everywhere. This just happened with hellebore. I noticed it first, on all things, Farmville, when it was part of the special St. Patrick’s Day activities there. First of all, the name sounds horrendous, but since “growing” it on Farmville yielded good money I put in a few virtual crops. Next, when I was walking home on a gray day a few weeks ago I noticed a pretty blooming plant with small greenish flowers. (This was when almost nothing was blooming.) It all came together when I came across an article by the Philadelphia Gardening Examiner. (Nice photos in that article.)

I presume their association with St. Patrick’s day is not only due to the greenish flowers but also due to the bloom time. Like with Bells of Ireland, their green color is because the “flowers” are actually sepal petals. These are the normally small petals that are at the bases of flowers. Apparently hellebores are in the Ranunculaceae family. Some types are evergreen.

I photographed these pinkish-purple hellebores up in Roland Park. Trust them to have the fancier version up there.