"April is the Cruelest Month..."

It shouldn't be at all surprising that TS Eliot is one of this English major's favourite authors, and The Waste Land one of my favourite poems. Yes, it's complex, and most people don't know more than the first few lines, which sum up the current situation in my garden:

April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.

April has certainly been meteorologically capricious, starting off with a late-April 1 snowstorm, which continued into April 2, then moderating for a day or so, then more snow...then serious mildness, then cold and grey...and now cold and sunny. Out of the wind, it's pleasant outdoors, and you can feel heat in the sun, til you encounter what my longsuffering spouse calls "a lazy wind." That's the kind that goes right through you, rather than around you. The hill here in Scotts Bay is highly skilled at such lazy winds.

What's a gardener to do with such weather? It's confusing for us, and for our plants, too. Many things are still soundly sleeping, being later at breaking dormancy so they run no risk of damage from the fluctuating weather. I have a pile of evergreen boughs which I've been keeping over things like the hellebores and epimedium, but I have begun some garden cleanup on warm, not so windy days.

I've been cutting the dried stalks of perennials and piling them here and there for moving later to my disposal site. I've pulled some weeds, too, mostly couchgrass and some of the biennials like willow herb,  plus the ever-creeping ground ivy. I've done the winter-damage pruning, which is to remove damaged limbs from shrubs, and given the rugosa roses all a vigourous cutting back.

When you plant bulbs in pretty much every bed in your garden, you need to be careful if you're raking away protective mulch or garden detritus. You don't want to damage the charming little spring bulbs like this puschkinia (striped squill).

Despite the weather fluctuations, there are very obvious signs of spring being here in earnest, even if it's a little on the cool side. My horse is shedding in earnest, and I just watched him and the ancient donkey playing a game of Silly-Buggers, in which they chased each other around with a lot of snorting, bucking, galloping and head shaking.

I missed getting photos of horse-and-donkey silly games, but was able to catch Mr. Pheasant in all his handsome, Pheasant-came-acourtin' glory. We have a number of pheasants that regularly come to the back yard to feed on seed dropped from the bird feeders.

The goldfinches have begun to change to their courting colours too, and the fox sparrows, grackles, robins and redwings are back in great numbers. I must say that although I love and feed birds, I'm not what you'd call a birding expert. I kept wondering where the female redwinged blackbirds were, til I realized I was mistaking them for fox sparrows. We have both, and now that I've studied up I see the difference, but...oh well. I suppose a decree asking all birds to wear nametags wouldn't work awfully well.

Someone was complaining about coltsfoot the other day, but I'm of a different mindset about that early bloomer. Coltsfoot and dandelions are very important to pollinators such as early awakening bees, some of which have been seen (on calmer days) in the heath and the crocuses. So at this time of year, I gently urge gardeners to be a little patient with the coltsfoot, and with the dandelions when they start, as until we get a lot of plants blooming, our native bees and any wandering honeybees, as well as other beneficial pollinators, rely on these plants to help them survive these chilly days.

Take heart, fellow gardeners. I was just talking to a nurseryman who agrees that spring is cool and slow, but that it is definitely coming. Before we know it, it will be tulip time, magnolia time, and lilacs will be intoxicating us all.

I do wonder why it is that goutweed (ground elder, bishops weed, Aegopodium) is not phased by cold weather, frost, salt, or deer. That just seems so unfair, don't you think?