Today's glorious spring moment

This is how one part of the garden looked this afternoon. We had three nights of serious frosts over the holiday weekend, and the Sugar Tyme crab apple tree above was hit, but thankfully the flowers appear to have weathered the cold better than it appeared at first.

The leaves of some hostas were also damaged, as were new leaves on oak and ash trees and the leaves and flowers of the French lilacs. My favorite Korean lilacs are fine because they were still in bud. What can you do? Mother Nature delivers good and bad.

I'm happy to report that my program of setting garden bootcamp days for early in the week and keeping Thursdays and Fridays for other things is going well so far.

© Yvonne Cunnington, Country Gardener

It's Sugar Tyme

I have a thing for crabapples, especially white flowering ones. My favorite is this beauty, a good disease-resistant cultivar sold as Sugar Tyme (Malus 'Sutyzam'), which is in bloom right now.

What makes it great is masses of gorgeous, fragrant flowers in May, followed by long-lasting red fruit, which persist almost into winter until flocks of migrating cedar waxwings swoop in to clean the berries off.

I'm a fan too of 'White Angel' and 'Donald Wyman', also white-flowering crabs. Aside from the white ones (I have a spot between our old silo and the farm pond that I call the crabapple orchard), I planted a number of purple-leafed, pink-flowering 'Thunderchild'. Unfortunately, they've been duds, producing fewer flowers than the white cultivars and losing their leaves half way through the summer. I've had them for three years now.

My husband is quite ruthless about turfing under-performing plants - maybe rock gardeners are less tolerant - but I like to give them a sporting chance, especially trees. But if the Thunderchilds don't improve this year, I'll bite the bullet and pull them out. There's always another tree to try out...