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DEPARTMENTS In the garden
Spring might officially begin on March 20, but in New Mexico’s metro areas, our urban banana belts where the heat reflected from walls and paving buffer the worst cold, many gardeners’ trowel hands begin to itch as soon as the daytime temperatures hold in the low 60s. Late winter is worse than an Eyewitness News investigation for exposing the holes in a garden’s design. Ideally you already have a mix of plants that provide color as early in the season as possible, but if Julius Caesar’s seer was describing your garden when he said “Beware the Ides of March,” now is the time to either do a bit of planting or mark your calendar to remind yourself to plant when the time is right. Check the views out key windows, and approach your front door with a visitor’s eyes in early spring because by the end of May you might see the Garden of Eden and forget what you were missing. If you are starting with bare ground, spring can be a daunting time. Wind abrades the soft foliage of new transplants, wearing them down before they can sink roots into the still cold soil. On a large lot, you might want to focus on the area right around the house, the patios and courtyards where walls buffer the wind, and where new planting and mulches can help keep the dunes from drifting in when you open your door. Developing the entire garden from bare ground to future treetops might seem overwhelming, but at the same time it leaves you many more opportunities to realize a vision of the space, to make the space truly yours. Spring is an energizing season. As the earth reawakens after winter, we can’t help but feel the pulse of new life quickening, but because of the great swings in temperature, desert plants rouse themselves slowly. The season begins a few buds at a time, rising to a crescendo of color in May.
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Our spring days are rarely gray like they tend to be in wetter climates where April showers involve an un-New Mexican level of cloud cover. Still, having the spring blues is a good thing as Tuscan Blue rosemary, blue flax, or catmint are beautiful complements to all the yellow flowers that bloom early in the growing season. Winter jasmine, a plant with long slender evergreen stems that can be used to arch over fences and walls, sprawl along the ground, or be trimmed to have a more mounded shrubby form, is one of the earliest spring bloomers, sometimes covered with star-shaped yellow flowers as early as late January and continuing into early March in cooler locations. The daisies of ‘Colorado Gold’ gazania dot its grassy foliage. A few buds open every sunny day in winter, but as the soil warms up, this lovely little perennial becomes a lustrous canary yellow carpet. To read the complete story, please find Su Casa at your local newsstand or order it online here or by phone at 505-344-1783 or toll-free 866-256-4925.
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