But everywhere the remnants of a brutal, late winter blizzard that left my yard buried for weeks in 3 feet of snow, are still in evidence.
Most of the bushes and trees have survived intact and are blooming ferociously.
And my early spring carpet of blue scilla has burst from the ground and is putting on a show.
Time will tell whether it will "spring" back next year but I'm not optimistic.
Here's another Japanese quince which only seems to be half dead.
Consensus here is that the culprits are rabbits. The bane of my garden.
For weeks after that formidable blizzard, a thick blanket of covered the grass and weeds that sustain the rabbits through winter. The snow weighed down the branches and the rabbits climbed aboard, helping themselves to the bark and stripping the branches clean.
And so no flowers formed. No leaves are budding. I'm not optimistic that the bushes will come back. Time will tell.
What do you think? Is there any hope that my Japanese quinces will come back?
Are you having a gorgeous spring, and does your neighborhood bear winter's scars?
Sadly, I'm not too optimistic about your Japanese quinces, but it's good that most of your plants survived our brutal winter. Here, everything seems to be blooming as it should . . . .
ReplyDeleteGlad to hear...
DeleteI have some rabbit damage on my blueberry bushes. My forysthia is blooming nicely and the antique dogwood is getting ready, as is the lilac and the big rhododendrons.. Sorry about your quince!
ReplyDeleteWe have snow this morning. I'm ready for spring but it's never reliably here in the High Peaks until later in the month. I do have some daffodils blooming but usually my lilacs are putting on their show at the beginning of June.
ReplyDeleteI've never had anything to do with Japanese quince, as it won't survive here, but I believe it's one of those shrubs that you can cut to the ground (if necessary) and it will come back. It blooms on "old wood" so you just wouldn't have any blooms this year and it would be very small for a while. The branches that are completely girdled are dead and should be cut off, either way. Good luck!
(Selden)
That sounds right Selden, because the soil at the base of the bush is riddled with new shoots. It tries to come up in the lawn. Usually my garden helpers come in and weed wack the shoots but maybe not this year.
DeleteThe daffodils are past, the lilac bush is dead and must be removed. Our Iris patches are all budding up, so that is good news. We have one spot in the front where nothing seems to thrive and it is very frustrating. I'm going to do a deep dive into native plants and see if we can find a plant that grows there.
ReplyDeleteGrowing indigenous plants really makes a difference. All of my viburnums are doing fine.
DeleteI have had "Native pollinator plant landscaper" on my long-term to-do list for a year. We have a ratty front lawn (due probably to the enormous antique swamp oak that I love), and I'm not interested in nurturing grass, but I also don't want to do the design and digging work. Maybe this summer I will finally find someone to pay to do it!
DeleteI'm so sorry about your Japanese quince, Hallie. I have absolutely no expertise in gardening, so I won't hazard an opinion. For me, "gardening" means buying four well-started hanging baskets to put in my four-armed shepherd's hook once we are safely past Mother's Day. Though I will admit that I have been toying with putting out a tiny herb garden in a container... But even that feels risky for my gardening abilities.
ReplyDeleteGrow herbs in pots, definitely!! And make a separate one just for the basil. I have a lovely pot of chives that winters outside and came from the pal of Jungle Red, Edith Maxwell. (if you have bunnies forget about oregano...)
DeleteI agree with Selden that cutting the Japanese quince off to see if it will regrow and bloom another time. I think if you leave it the way it is it will spend too much energy just trying to recover from the rabbit damage.
ReplyDeleteWe made it out to the nursery yesterday to buy replacements for our plants that didn’t survive the long freeze we had here in Ocala. Now I need to get out and plant them. And then pray that we do get some decent rain as we are having a drought. Thunderstorms are in the forecast for this afternoon.
I bought 3 large-ish sedum plants at my local supermarket yesterday and today I'm figuring out where to put them and hoping I can still dig holes big enough...
DeleteFrom Celia:, thanks Hallie, waking up to your photos is such a pleasure, particularly with little opportunity to get outside right now.
ReplyDeleteYesterday I was wheeled into the courtyard and despite the chill was able to sit with a good dose of vitamin D. and feeling most grateful to be moving and knowing that PT will work.
I love quince. We had a bush when we lived in NY. I think Selden is correct, cut it back, feed it, it's worth the effort.
So glad to hear from you, Celia! SUN! Nature's perfect drug.
DeleteHallie, I’m sorry about your flowering quince! The dastardly rabbits! They climbed on top of the snow and ate the clematis vines and roses. I thought they had killed my 3 oldest roses but I cut them back and fertilized and they are growing back. All the clematis seem to have survived. Gardening is surely not for the faint of heart!
ReplyDeleteAnd not for anyone who's opposed to animal cruelty. Dastardly creatures...
DeleteHallie, I have hope for the one that's half alive, but not much for the other, sorry to say.
ReplyDeleteDeer took a big chunk out of one of our shrubs over the winter. Now the robins, who always build nest in that shrub, are back and eying it as if they're saying, "this neighborhood has really gone downhill." The good news is, yes, at least one pair did still build their nest in it.
I love it when the robins decide to move in... there's a viburnum right behind my back window that usually gets nested in every season. Fingers crossed.
DeleteI'm kind of a brown thumb here, so no advice to offer. Portland is lovely right now, with no rain in the forecast. This means I need to start watering (perhaps today!) Tulips and daffodils are done and my peonies are forming hard little balls prior to popping open. The dogwoods and lilac and California lilac on my walks are spectacular.. We basically had no winter to speak of--only a few nights below freezing and no snow or ice storms. Fat bunnies are hopping around eating everything, and I see how my neighbors try to thwart them by covering baby plants. Coyotes are abundant too and always out looking for breakfast.
ReplyDeleteCoyotes! Keep the little dogs indoors...
DeleteYep, exactly the same thing happened here. We have roses of Sharon bushes that are just stripped, and are viburnum, too. The garden people told me that the rabbits actually stand on the top of the snow to get the higher branches. And that they were so hungry this winter that they just ate everything. Ahhhhh And I agree, it looks bleak. But it might be just the tiniest bit too early, that’s what I keep telling myself.
ReplyDeleteAnd our tulips are coming up, too, except one strain of them, the variegated pink and white ones, just failed because of the snow. The leaves came up white and mushy, it’s almost interesting if it weren’t so sad.
And the squirrels completely ravaged some of the tulip bulbs, too. Or it might’ve been some creature like a woodchuck. But it was hideously destructive. They leave the little crumbles of them behind, just to show they were there.
But the plants that are beautiful still… They are getting there! We already have dozens of blooming tulips, and that’s so exciting!
I love spring bulbs... but I've never been able to grow daffodils. The squirrels dig them up and feast. My scilla and wood hyacinths were in the yard when we bought the house back iin 1980.
DeleteMy white iceberg roses are flowering like crazy. They are the only flowers I've planted with the exception of some bedding plants like geraniums and fragrant night blooming jasmine. We live near the coast and our soil is like concrete so happy the roses are still so well established. In the back yard, we have an overgrown hibiscus tree, a few palm tress, a guava, and a giant fig tree that I had cut back by about half - and it is now even bigger than before. It towers over the house and is almost as wide, luckily it is in the back of the yard. I just planted an olive tree and I've noticed a bunch of little green olives.
ReplyDeleteWe had an olive tree in Los Angeles and I've always wondered if we were more knowledgeable, if we could have brined and eaten them. Mostly they just squashed underfoot leaving a red moosh.
DeleteHallie, where is that line "winter's bone" from? I am trying to recall if it is from the Outlander novel or another book?
ReplyDeleteWe saw beautiful flowers blossoming during our walks. Very colorful. However, there is another flower that withered. About a month ago, we saw beautiful purple flowers and now there is only one left. The others in that row withered. We are getting more rain recently in the midst of heat waves from time to time here on the West Coast of the States.
Winter's bone? Maybe someone knows. I always assumed it was something like SHakespeare.
DeleteFrom Celia; I
DeleteHad time to chase the quote- Winter's Bone (2010) is a critically acclaimed crime thriller about 17-year-old Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) in the rural Ozarks, who must find her missing, drug-dealing father to prevent her family from losing their home, confronting a dangerous code of silence among her kin in the process. Directed by Debra Granik, the film is praised for its gritty realism, suspense, and Lawrence's breakout performance, earning it the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and multiple Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actress for Lawrence.
I'm very sorry if your quinces are gone, Hallie; I hope they revive. Even on my apartment balcony, I've lost plants in pots that had previously withstood the cold--one year, a hydrangea, another a lantana. But the only animals I lose plants to are aphids. Luckily, neither rabbits nor deer can jump up to my balcony!
ReplyDeleteI gave up growing roses because of the aphids. You have to be up for going out daily and picking them off. Yuck.
DeleteHallie we had a horrible (absolutely awful) infestation of aphids on our large hibiscus tree. We were advised to use Neem Oil which is an organic, natural pesticides and is environmentally safe for pets and beneficial insects when used correctly, as it typically kills only sap-sucking pests.
DeleteChecking in before dashing off to the annual Civic Garden Center plant sale. A landscaper friend donated some greenhouse-started heirloom tomatoes that already have flowers, so I am hoping to score three of them.
ReplyDeleteSelden beat me to it. I agree with her advice, especially since you say you are seeing new shoots. It will come back, and more lush than ever. But blooming next year. A lot of shrubby plants benefit from that whacking back, although it is hard to trust!
Our yard is in peak bloom, and we already have cherries ripening. Yesterday, I picked the first--of many-- strawberries, and the gooseberry and currant bushes are loaded with fruit. (If anyone has ideas on how to use gooseberries besides pie, let me know!) We have been enjoying the asparagus for three weeks. We had a really early spring this year. One more night of low temps tonight, and I'm hoping that's it. Time for annuals!
Karen your garden sounds beautiful!!
DeleteAsparagus! What a luxury! Lucy grows them, too.
DeleteAsparagus takes years, unless you start with two- or three-year old crowns. This is the fifth year for ours, and as long as I fertilize every year it could go for decades.
DeleteI was just talking to a woman at the plant sale who cleared a bunch of cement and rock that had been in a corner of a yard. Asparagus, to her delight, started coming up the next spring. It must have been underneath all that for a long time. Tough plant, once it's established, and well worth taking the trouble.
What a great survival story!
DeleteI hope they will come back. Are Japanese Quince edible? We had quince our VA yard that were wonderful, but tart as quince are. I agree with Selden and Karen, as long as you have shoots, the flowers will come next year.
ReplyDeleteAs for storm damage, after the year of ice storms two years ago we have our first buds on our rhododendron this year. Not too many, but it's a start. Our winter this year was extremely cold, but not too snowy and for the first time, deer have eaten the shoots off the lower branches of the apple trees. The upper branches are fine, so it looks like the moose will be grateful to their shorter cousins.
Quince are edible but they require a lot of work and sweetening to make them so. Mostly they get used to make a jam that's not tasty enough to merit the work needed to prepare them.
DeleteSurprisingly, our plumeria ignored almost 2 months of neglect and is ready to bloom. And I am enjoying jacaranda season here in SoCal.
ReplyDeleteYes the jacarandas are in full bloom everywhere. So beautiful! Except when the flowers stick to my car. Haha!
DeleteBeautiful pictures, Hallie! I've lived in AZ for 33 years but I still miss New England in the autumn and spring.
ReplyDeleteBut you have heat and wind and rain and dust to beat the band...
DeleteYou never know, Hallie. Every spring my little crepe myrtle looks kaput, and then it starts leafing out. The peonies that have been transplanted twice totally disappear then they're back. We had a colder than normal winter with much more snow than normal, but almost everything is returning.
ReplyDeleteThat's good to hear.
DeleteWaaah so sorry about the attack on your Japanese quince! Is it one of the kind with flowers that change from pink to white? I’d give anything to have one of those in my San Francisco garden! Alas, it never gets cold enough for quince or lilacs or peonies to thrive there (and I’ve killed many a bust trying ) I hope that cutting it back will bring it back to its full glory! Thank yoi for posting such lovely photos of your garden!
ReplyDelete