Hardy Signs of Life

We're getting our cold snap now, so I've only been venturing out in the sunny gaps between snow/hail showers to prune/see "what's up" in garden land. Snowdrops are up. So are the little reticulata irises at Roswitha's...

I wonder how they've fared the last couple nights. Even the hellebores in my garden are rethinking their early start...

So were Andy and Jono (intrepid arborist and right-hand man), who started recurving this laurel hedge one frosty day, while I prepped, protected, and stuck up for the perennial beds below.

Andy's actually great (which is why I recommend him to help in my gardens whoo!), and brought a wide ramp that he braced between two ladders so that cuttings/boots didn't crush the garden beds. He says "the older I get, the more tools I need" and I say I wish everyone brought the right gear to prevent damage to plants. I agree though, that a person can spend years in gardening, performing feats of strength and endurance out of sheer joie de vivre, and not really have to consider body-and-plant-saving systems until the big 4-0, or so.

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While I have them in the shot, ye olde apple trees have produced a lot of new growth since their restorative pruning last year. Jim & Ro have an old friend/sculptor who comes in from the Gulf Islands to prune these trees (I imagine a woman in rustic robes, with long wavy hair threaded with grey and perhaps a sickle) and who, last year, performed quite a drastic reduction, removing several large old branches. So last summer resulted in a lot of vegetative growth, and perhaps this year we'll see more flower buds and a better crop yield by next year. Learnin' from experience...