before
Despite dire predictions of rain, Sunday proved to be a sunny day here at Henbogle, which probably did more for my emotional well-being than a carload of anti-depressants. By 9:30 I was hard at work raking some of the perennial beds and doing some weeding, whoo-hoo!
after
The first task was to spread that pile of snow around to speed melting. The, raking and cutting back plants left for winter interest. I had to be careful not to damage the emerging crocuses and tulips.
The wet, heavy snow we received on February 22 caused a lot of 
damage to the woody shrubs in this bed. I pruned out many broken branches from the bush cherry 
and beach plum near the deck, the flowering almond, and the clethra. The poor Ruby Spice clethra was reduced to three little branches emerging from the ground. All of these shrubs were planted in April 2007.
After this garden was cleaned out, Dan and I worked on the lavender bed and the Russian sage hedge. Most of the lavender came through pretty well, although I did lose one Provence plant, which was odd because the other Provence plants looked to be in slightly better shape than the Hidcote Blue.
The Russian sage seemed to have suffered a bit from the wet leaves piled up against it all winter. I cut it back significantly and can only hope it pulls through, since it is a great plant for that spot.
The last project for the day was cleaning 
out the silver garden, and removing the stick trellis Dan and I made our first year in the house. On a rainy April weekend, dying to start gardening, we harvested some alder from our back 40 feet of overgrown lot and built the trellis, which we use to support morning glories. Alas, it was time
to make it kindling, we’ll have to build a new trellis some rainy weekend.
While it was GREAT to get outside and soak up some vitamin D, four hours of gardening my first day out of the chute demands some aspirin. Right now, I make the Tin Man look limber.
