More growth in the garden

We're a week into April - let's see what's growing in the garden!  First off, the hellebores are performing nicely.  The more pinky one (third pic) is being a little shy still...  I tried collecting seeds from the hellebores last year, lightly covered them in pots of soil/compost, and left them outdoors.  Never did see signs of sprouts last year.  I know where they are, lightly covered in leaves.  I checked a couple weeks ago and there were no signs of life - it's possible critters got them, or the seeds were duds...who knows.

The crocuses and other spring bulbs are performing beautifully.  I'm definitely seeing signs of bulbs multiplying for some of them, so that's great.  Maybe I'll continue to have reproduction in the crocuses and will be able to divide them one of these years.

Tulips and daffodils are slowly making their presence known as well...none have open flowers yet, but with the warm wet weather this week, I bet I have open daffs before the weekend!

I think this is going to be a hyacinth...

 Looks like at least some of the alpine strawberries have survived and are sprouting.  I'm seeing lots of empty spots where I planted them all a few years ago - since alpine strawberries don't spread on runners, I'll have to see if they self-seed and, if not, might have to start more plants next winter.  Mary and I went on a garden tour last spring, and the biggest, fanciest house has so many beds fulllll of alpine strawberries.  They were popping up everywhere at the edge of their very woodsy setting - so clearly they want to self-seed.

Speaking of strawberries, one of the three 4x4 plum/strawberry beds is looking like it's going to have some seriously heavy strawberry plant growth this year!  This bed was also really lush with leaves last year - I just didn't get a ton of strawberries out of this bed.  The other two beds are kind of fizzling out - I have more strawberry plants on the way, and figure I'll use this as an opportunity to rejuvenate those two beds.

Wonder if I'll get any plums this year?!  This IS the bed that had the ONE plum from the tree last year...not that I got to enjoy much of it, thanks to the birds.

What IS in "making more" mode are the raspberries...unfortunately they're doing all of this in the asparagus patch.  So far this spring there's no signs of asparagus popping up, but I've seen the first raspberry sprouting now...    All of last year's new canes (in the asparagus patch) just got a heavy pruning this past weekend.  The two plants DID seem to work well together - the asparagus was easy to get to during it's harvest period, then I stopped harvesting, and its tall, gangly spires were supported by all the raspberry canes.  We'll have to see if they continue to play nice together...

Here's one of the apple trees I'm working on espaliering.  I like seeing lots of little buds crammed close together like this - I think this counts as a spurring variety of apple, which means it should be able to handle heavy pruning and still produce a lot in a small space...some day.  I don't know that I made the wisest choice for all the varieties on the espalier fence - we'll see.

 Ditch lilies, gifted to me from one of Brett's coworkers last year, are popping up in one of the new beds I created last year - yay!  I looooove ditch lilies!

Annnnnd what would some yard/garden pics be without signs of problems.  In this case, it's all the mole holes in the yard.  You can see water sitting down in this hole, thanks to all the rain we've had.  I need to fill these holes before I break an ankle in one of them.