Raking up is hard to do...

Raking's not hard, I just thought it made a good headline. When you have a nice garden, people most often assume you spend every waking moment gardening. My garden, other than the hanging baskets of annuals, is all perennials. and is really not that much work. Spring & fall cleanup, some cutting back, a little bit of weeding (though the perennials are so jammed in, there's not much room for weeds), compost and/or mulch on occasion. Watering is constant, but I've got soaker hoses spread throughout most of the garden so even that happens effortlessly. I can go weeks without touching the garden or giving it much thought at all. As I was doing some spring cleanup and raking, here is what I found in the garden.

The Black Cane Bamboo is starting to get a (gray-ish) black cast to it, after having been here for five years.

Daffodils are at peak.

Stuff is starting to grow in the Harry Potter garden. This little plant marker lasted great outdoors through the winter.

The dwarf pear espalier actually has some blooms. I've never had pears actually grow, maybe this will be the year.

May Apples look like little umbrellas ready to pop open.

Variegated Firespray Tulip -- the variegated leaves add an extra pop.

The entire spring bulb garden (also in the photo at the very top) is colorful, but within a couple weeks it ought to be REALLY colorful. The right strip is my "river" of muscari. It has another couple week before the purple is dominate.

The potager needed the most raking & a bit of manual roto-tilling. But within about a half hour, it's ready for vegetable seeds. I'm impatiently waiting for those miniature boxwoods to grow together to look seamless. We're in year three now and they don't look like they've grown much at all. The rose standard in the center is about to burst out with leaves.