I'm not sure I'll ever get a good handle on time. Sometimes, it seems to be dragging along at a snail's pace, and other times, the days go by so quickly that I worry I've missed one or two. And so it is with the garden—in January, I'm sowing seeds in the laundry room every day and feeling so ahead of the game, and by late February, I'm panicking that I won't get everything done before the growing season takes off. The task that's consuming me these days is pruning countless plants before the first (or maybe second) week of March.
I've gotten through all of the Clematis group 3 pruning, but now I'm fretting over the group 2 vines and a whole host of other things. I mentioned that I have 12 Clematis vines on the property, but I haven't yet confessed to 12 climbing and shrub roses (and I don't count the two bushes that were here when we moved in). They're really starting to put on new shoots, so I'll have to pull on my gauntlets and get those taken care of this week.
But first, the fruit trees need my attention. I noticed yesterday that the plum trees are now covered in flower buds, so getting them back in shape took first priority this morning. Luckily, I took a lot off of them last year to get them into the prescribed goblet shape, so the work this morning only took about 15 minutes. For some reason, I always dread pruning the plum trees, which is a bit ridiculous because it's such wonderfully meditative work—I just forget year after year how happy it makes me.
This morning, I felt so peaceful working with the trees, following their branches and finding those that were damaged or rubbing and selecting where I needed to make a cut. It was an intimate time with two beautiful specimens, and the results are so satisfying. I've given them the attention they need to stay healthy, and they'll reward me in the coming weeks with beautiful blossoms and maybe—fingers crossed—a bumper crop of fruit. Want to learn about pruning plum trees? Check out this article.
I'll also be taking care of my group 2 Clematis vines this week, and I started this morning with 'Bourbon' because it always takes the "first to bloom" prize among the Clematis. I felt a little daunted by the task when I first stood in front of Bourbon to assess what I should do because she was a shaggy mess.
Group 2 vines require a careful approach, as they bloom on last year's growth. It's important to remove enough to provide good ventilation, but you don't want to cut so much that you end up losing a lot of blooms. It's a bit challenging to trace every stem there's a tangle of them, so I started by gently tugging at the thickest areas. This helped loosen a lot of the stems that had broken off but had been hung up among the others. I trimmed some stems down to the highest bud, and I lifted a section that had flopped over itself and carefully wove the stems through the fence. Finally, I found a lot of stems that had been scrambling across the ground, and I think I'll create a way to lift their heads off the ground but keep them low so I'll have an interesting display at the base of the plant. There may be some chicken wire sculpting ahead for me in the next few days.
I feel pretty good about what I accomplished with this one, and I'm looking forward to seeing that first shock of deep fuchsia that often peeks through the vine on the backside of the fence. That's the signal that Bourbon will soon provide a wall of flowers that will draw my attention every time I step outside the back door.
On to the roses...
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