Winter Garden Week: Prune

I want playing with the instagram app on my ipod and this post is a direct result of these pictures. Anyway, yesterday was a gorgeous beautiful clear sunny day. How could I not take advantage of that to finish up my winter gardening? I finalized all the rest of the pruning and now I wait a month or two until active spring planting begins

Hydrangea bushes. I always wait until late winter to prune these because I love the shape of these dried out sticks in the bush.

The first set of leaf buds are starting to emerge. I always cut down my *huge* hydrangea bushes down to the first set of these little leaf sets

Pruning my tea roses. Count down five sets of leaves and do a diagonal cut right above the next set of new leaves (see the bud?)

This tea rose hung on to this bloom for five months!

Tulip bulbs are emerging

Daffodil bulbs emerging along with perennial columbine shoots

The gorgeous hellebores plant getting ready to bloom

All my primroses survived the mild winter and are starting to set out their first blooms of the year. I trimmed off all the dead and sad brown leaves and got ready to enjoy the first spring blooms (do you see the little buds?)

Awww...my hydrangea bushes after a fairly severe haircut. Don't worry they'll be 8 feet tall in the summer with huge dinner plate blooms.

My most gorgeous flower. Can you believe I have a little girl? I still can't believe it.