May 29, 2007 : Snowdrops Anenome

Snowdrops Anemome, or Anenome sylvestris, are blooming in the gardens.

Now that business is slowing a little, it's time to get out and start cleaning up the perennial beds and planting the annual beds. Gardening with perennials, especially if you have a rototiller, is much more work than gardening with annuals. A brief comparison of the annual beds that dad neatly rototilled in one afternoon and the nightmarish mish-mash of old dead stems, weeds and emerging perennials that will take a crew of young boys days to clean up makes that difference clear.

It's tough to delegate this cleanup work, because perennials and weeds are difficult to distinguish from each other at this time of year. So I tag ambiguous weeds with spray paint and put flags by inconspicuous perennials that I want to save.