Gardening during the Covid pandemic

Recent days brought forth flowers ahead of time.  The dianthus walk has many plants in bloom—enough to smell as we walk down the path.  In fact I hadn’t realized they had flowers open until I entered the garden early one morning before dawn more than a week ago and was greeted by their fragrance.  To have both Phlox subulata and dianthus at the same time is a special treat. Seeds on the hellebores are ripe now—both species and hybrid forms, many of which we hand pollinated selecting either wild species or our favorite hybrids.  We rush to get to the seeds before they fall. When all of the seeds of one plant have been collected, we plant them in pots and set them into cold frames where we expect to see germination late next winter. Many primulas have been in bloom for more than a month, and that gave us time to pollinate our favorites—the old fashioned, wild Primula vulgaris and P. x polyantha.  These are some of the most successful forms we grow, so we go out with our paintbrushes and select a “male” and “female” of each form or color and transfer the pollen from a male to a receptive female.  We will collect and sow the seeds as soon as they are ripe in about a month and sow them immediately. We are working with species daffodils that have swollen seed pods now and must be visited everyday to collect the seeds before they fall.  These, too, we will plant quickly and wait patiently for gemination next year. So the end of each season is the beginning of the next year. We don’t look back. We look forward.