It looks like it is going to be a wonderful year for hydrangeas.
More flower buds than I have ever seen on my mophead. And my oakleaf, too.
Anybody need me to do flowers for a wedding?
(If you have questions about your hydrangeas, one of the best websites I've found is All About Hydrangeas, with pruning and fertlizing and drying infomation and lots more.)
Photo credit: Baltimore Sun/Susan Reimer
If you are trying to plan your garden so that it is always in bloom, make time to visit your local garden center every week or so and see what is blooming there.
Choose something from among the perennials or annuals that are looking particularly splendid and take it home.
That way, your garden won't look like Afghanistan in August.
Carrie Engel of Valley View Farms in Cockeysville is saving us a step.
Photo credit: Gary Mihoces
My friend Nan tells the story of taking peonies to her teachers as a schoolgirl.Not because she was especially fond of her teachers. But because ants are particularly fond of peonies.
Photo credit: Baltimore Sun/Susan Reimer
Faithful readers of Garden Variety know that I have had no success with tulips in the ground.
Something always eats the bulbs before they have a chance to sprout.
An attempt to grow them in pots one season didn't work either. They rotted.
Photo credit: Baltimore Sun/Susan Reimer
I once planted 150 tulip bulbs in my yard and not a single one came up the following spring.
There were several voles lying on their backs and patting their stomachs, but not a single tulip.
I tried planting bulbs in containers, too. But the containers with the water reservoirs that are so helpful during a long, hot summer held too much water in the winter and the bulbs rotted.
I had pretty much given up on tulips and instead planted lots of daffodils. Voles hate them and they multiply like mad.
Guest blogger Joannah Hill on summer-flowering bulbs:
Spring has barely begun and I'm already thinking about summer. Sure, tulips and daffodils are great, but I have to confess I only consider them a warm-up act for summer-blooming bulbs.
My foxtail lilies have already thrown out foliage and the allium schubertii have the beginnings of buds. I won't see either of those bloom until June, but it was incentive to start planting some of the other summer-blooming bulbs.
The earliest of the summer bloomers are ranunculus and anemones. But don't try to chew on those tongue-twisters; use their lovely common names instead -- buttercups and windflowers. I asked my little neighbors (ages 4 and 6) to help me plant and they got a lesson on which end is up with these funny-looking bulbs.
Guest blogger Joannah Hill on primroses:
Every year I find a new garden passion. Last year it was Japanese chrysanthemums; this year it may be primroses.
Last spring I bought two primroses at the 32nd Street Market. They looked so cheerful and the weather had been so gloomy. I put them on my kitchen windowsill. After they bloomed out, instead of composting them, I stuck them in a bare spot in the garden. To my surprise, they had a modest second bloom in the fall.
Susan Reimer has spent 16 years writing about raising kids - among other topics - in her column for The Baltimore Sun. And every time son Joseph or daughter Jessie passed another milestone - driver's license, college, wedding or a move to a new military duty station - she has planted another garden. Now she will be writing about those gardens - and yours - here on Garden Variety. 
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