These are perilous times... I am so ready for spring and yet it's at least two months away. What's dangerous about that you may ask... I guess I'd have to say it's the combination of an obsessive gardener's spring fever and the availability of anything one could ever want via the internet. Let's take conifers for instance... I have forty of them ordered for this spring and I'm longing to open those parcels and see the goodies inside! Blogging doesn't help either... I'm constantly reminded of the glories that will burst upon us in April... I'm including a couple of lovely faces that I'm longing to see... more with each new day! Temps above freezing for the next ten days aren't going to make this malady any better either!
First of all... a favorite tree for spring through July. This is my variegated norway maple. This tree is gorgeous from spring through mid-summer but after that the foliage goes downhill, bleaching out and browning on the edges of the leaves. I do believe it is worth keeping however because it is so outstanding in May and June especially. There is one other problem... it likes to revert. Sometimes it will be a leaf or two, but often times they develop into an entire green branch which if allowed, would overpower the tree in short order. I invested in a 24' pole pruner this past summer which should allow me to keep up with the reversions for a few more years. Once this pruner can't reach them, who knows what will happen...
First thing in spring, the maple's foliage is quite a bright shade of yellow as seen below, and the green isn't all that noticeable... soon, however, the yellows fade to the creamy white as in the photo above, and the green leaf centers are much more obvious.
Future plans for this area include widening the border and adding a variety of conifers. Hopefully I'll be able to pick up some of the maple's colors in the conifer foliage.
It's fun picking up the maple's colors with some of the hostas that grow beneath it...
Here's the first of today's lovely faces... a hellebore...
I think that as a result of blogging, I am remarkably more intimate with my gardens... more aware of the small details, and possessing much more of a sense of where I want to take them in the future. Here's another lovely face... this time a double hellebore.
My second choice of deciduous tree for this posting, is Aesculus carnea 'briottii'. Pictured here during the last week of May, it abides fairly close to the aforementioned maple and I do think they make a pretty good pair when the aesculus is in full bloom.
This tree is actually a hybrid between the European horse chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum) and the red horse chestnut (Aesculus pavia). While there isn't a lot of fall color, spring bloom lasting close to three weeks makes up for it. The tree is said not to produce fruit, but I do find a few nuts laying about upon occasion. Here are a few more photos of this tree that rates high on my list of favorites. The only negatives that I've experienced thus far include some frost cracks on the south side of the trunk after a very hard winter, and last season one branch died back... hopefully this isn't cause to get overly concerned, but time will tell.
And for my last lovely face for today... a close-up of briottii... until next time, Larry
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