The first days of the new year saw me cutting back dying perennial stalks and seedheads, and raking dead leaves from around some of the shrubs. We are urged to let the leaves remain on the ground to rot and add more nutrients to the soil, but I have several problems with that.
The most significant one is thanks to the city arborists who years ago planted a sycamore maple in front of my house. Every fall it sheds a gazillion winged seeds into my garden where they cluster in the crowns of tender plants like hellebores and peonies.
If I don't remove them, every one will sprout and have to be hand-pulled, often breaking off the tiny new buds of the perennials.
Then there is the number of slugs that shelter and lay eggs under the carpet of leaves. Finally, there is the disease factor. My roses are healthy, but they will only stay that way if I ensure that any lurking blackspot spores on fallen leaves are not there to infect new foliage.
Besides, early ephemerals are already pushing their way up and I'd like to make their progress towards bloom as easy as possible. Leaf blades of snowdrops and snow crocus are already above ground, but winter aconites are always the first to open their cheery little flowers.
Hellebores are in bud and some are even opening their flowers.
'Cherry Blossom' is ahead of the others, and 'Frilly Kitty' has one open flower.
Elsewhere, I find pleasure in small moments, like a briefly blue sky behind the seedpods on Stewartia pseudocamellia.
Or a ray of sunlight catching the trunk of Acer griseum, the paperbark maple.
Or even the mustard-yellow young stems and buds of Swiss willow (Salix helvetica),
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