The State of My Garden After the Freeze

It's been a while, more than two weeks, since my last blog post. Once you get out of the swing, it's hard to get back in. We were in the grip of a two-week freeze then, so I posted pictures of frosty plants, wondering what would survive. I've had lots of ideas for blog posts floating around my brain, but haven't really gotten it together enough to write any of them.

Yesterday was a lovely day, plenty of sun, and it hit 50 degrees. I spent a good few hours out in the garden, moving some shrubs and perennials around. Today we were again promised sun, but it never materialized, at least here south of Seattle. There was plenty of fog, so thick at times I couldn't see the trees across the street. And so far it has hovered around 39 degrees all day. I tried to do some gardening, but came in after about 20 minutes with tingling hands.

Maybe it was sunny in town.

So, I'm writing a blog post about the garden instead of gardening.

Actually, I'm mostly just showing you some pictures, that I took with my new camera and the new macro lens that I bought for it. I'm still getting used to the camera and the lens, so bear with me. I had to get down on my belly for some of these. Elbows and body make a pretty good tripod.

The Sarcococca confusa/Sweetbox is blooming, and it smells wonderful!

Last year's berries are still hanging on the shrub, along with this year's flowers.

I have two flowers on my Hamamelis/Witch Hazel. This is one of them.

Cyclamen coum is starting to flower.

Hellebore 'Ivory Prince' has several large clusters of flowers like this.

There are plenty of swelling buds on everything.

I have three thriving cuttings of black pussy willow, that I got more than a year ago from a friend. No catkins yet, but soon.

Serviceberry is showing signs of growth.

The new leaves on Rubus lineatus start out silver. I love this plant!

Crocuses (new this year) are starting to pop.

Daffodils (also new) are popping too.

It feels like I've been waiting forever for this Grevillea's flowers to open. You'll probably hear me whooping and hollering when they do.

Future flowers on Mahonia repens

I don't recall the Mahonia repens blooming before, but it must have, because it looks like there are a couple of seedlings scattered around.

Every time I dig a hole in my garden, I bring up a crop of rocks. I've started using them to line the bottom of the fence.

The rocks are useful for plugging gaps like this, which let in all the neighborhood cats, not to mention other critters.

The last time I dug a hole in my compost bin to bury some food waste, I noticed it was teeming with worms.

So I cracked the bin a bit to get a picture of the area lower down. This looks like useful stuff.

"Oh No! The gap is closing! Get yourself back in the bin, you jumper!"

And now for the bad news, which is all about the Agaves.

Yes, it's wet, but it's also kind of jelly-like. Only the two center leaves are stiff.

It looks good, but it's completely mush. Poor little baby.

The center is in good shape, but a lot of the arms are goners.

I'm pretty sure Agaves aren't supposed to bend like this.

Or this.

Sad face.