Happy Easter
April 14 - April 20, 2025
Weekly journal of a Midwest gardener… A week of weather watching and preparing for Easter.
Monday, April 14, 2025
I took pictures of flowers to put on my monthly Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day post, wrote and scheduled the post, and then worked on my presentation for the Herb Society of America. After a quick lunch, I went to garden club and that was pretty much the day.1 Not much time to do any actual gardening, which was a shame because it was sunny and warmer than it has been.
Tuesday, April 15, 2025
The wind blew, and what became of the day?2 It was overcast and cold for most of the day, but the sun came out in early evening, and I watered all the pansies and violas. I noticed the feral cat of the neighborhood sunning herself in my garden. She didn’t even try to leave when I was out there looking at her and telling her nicely that she was trespassing. In the sunroom, most of the pepper seeds have germinated, so I can thin those out now.
Wednesday, April 16, 2025
It was a lovely, sunny day. Though the morning was quite cool, by the time I headed out to mow the front lawn again in mid-afternoon, it had warmed up enough that I was comfortable in a long-sleeved shirt. I still haven’t mowed in the back. I’m holding off to let the crocus foliage continue to grow. It will be nice and shaggy on Saturday, providing perfect places to hide Easter eggs in plain sight for the littlest egg hunters when I host my entire family for an Easter Saturday afternoon.3
Thursday, April 17, 2025
Busy, busy, busy. After some shopping, I filled all the Easter eggs for the big hunt, which might be the big, “here are your 10 eggs, no place to hide them indoors” hunt. I also started rounding up tables and chairs for indoor dining.4 And I met my sister at the greenhouse so she could buy some hanging baskets, which she promised she would not leave out when it gets cold again. Not if, when.5
Friday, April 18, 2025
Good Friday. I finally planted the flat of violas I picked up last weekend. I put some in a pot by the front door that is in too much shade for violas, but they’ll be fine for a few days. I nestled a few more violas amongst the tulips by the mailbox, and then tucked the rest of them in here and there. Now I need the crabapple tree to hold its petals through whatever storms arrive between now and Saturday afternoon so that it is still in full bloom and a cheerful greeting for what otherwise might be a rainy day.
Saturday, April 19, 2025
Holy Saturday. After a round of thunderstorms, I went out early in the morning to check the rain gauge and discovered a species tulip that had self-sown in the lawn. I love that! More please! I also saw that the pearlbush was in full bloom.6 We did get more rain through the day, enough to move the egg hunt indoors for the first time in forever, but a good time was had by all.7 8
Sunday, April 20, 2025
Easter Sunday. Happy Easter! I poured out .74 inches of rain from the rain gauge, which along with the .41 inches from yesterday morning, makes for a good amount of rain. At least enough for now. I’ve watered seedlings indoors and hope to do some light weeding later in the day, weather permitting. Those weeds ought to practically throw themselves out of the soil with a little encouragement from one of my many weeding tools!
That’s a Week!
The extended forecast shows no low temperatures even close to freezing through May 4th, so the early birds may be okay with planting some frost-tender plants sooner rather than later in my area. My youngest sister saw that forecast, too, and texted me on Sunday asking if I’d meet her at the greenhouse on Monday to help her pick out her plants. Will I be tempted to also buy some frost-tender annuals this early? Stay tuned to find out.
Quotable
“Every spring is the only spring, a perpetual astonishment.” - Ellis Peters
I hope you find some astonishment in your spring garden this spring.
Have a great gardening week!
Where Else to Find Me and How to Support Me
🌐 My online home is my website. where my main blog still lives happily as May Dreams Gardens. Come visit anytime!
🎙️ Tune in every Wednesday to The Gardenangelists, my weekly podcast where Dee Nash and I dig into all things gardening—flowers, veggies, and all the best dirt, plus gardening books. We’re on YouTube, too, so you can listen and watch!
🌸 Curious about the women who shaped garden writing? Check out Lost Ladies of Garden Writing—a passion project of mine with new posts every other Wednesday.
📸 Follow me on Instagram for letters to my garden, pictures of my flowers and garden, and the occasional reel that might make you smile (or nod in solidarity).
📚 Add a little garden joy to your bookshelf with one (or all!) of my five humorous yet helpful gardening books—or pick up one of my two children’s books for the young garden-lovers in your life.
🛒 Shopping for garden goodies or books? If you use one of my affiliate links (often to Amazon or Bookshop.org), I earn a tiny commission—at no extra cost to you.
🌿 And the biggest help of all? Share this newsletter with fellow gardeners who might enjoy it. Word of mouth is the best kind of fertilizer to help a newsletter grow.
.Thank you!
If you like what you’ve read here and haven’t already done so, please subscribe to join me in the garden every week.
Our speaker at garden club taught us all about invasive Asian jumping worms. I will never look at an earthworm again without trying to figure out if it is this baddie!
I spent too much time in the afternoon on Tuesay driving around with a friend, looking at different roofs to see what the shingle colors look like on an entire roof and not just a little sample because I’m getting a new roof this spring. It’s a lot of money, but hopefully, it’s the last roof I’ll need to worry about on this house, so I want to get the right one!
Given the 100% chance of rain on Saturday, I’m also borrowing tables and chairs because it looks like it might be too wet for people to eat outside picnic-style.
And here’s a head-scratcher… why would I buy a card table and not buy card table chairs? I need to look again but honestly, I don’t think I own card table chairs!
Though my sister said that last year she had all her frost-tender annuals planted by May 1st, we “old-timers” don’t consider it frost-free around here until at least Mother’s Day. And even then, we need to study the ten-day forecast to be sure. As I remind people. I believe it was in ‘97 that I lost all my peppers and tomatoes to a frost on May 25th!
Pearlbush, Exochorda x macrantha 'The Bride', is one of those shrubs that is stunning when in bloom but then it fades into the background of the garden for most of the year. That’s fine. If it was always blooming, we’d all forget how pretty it is.
Because we have a wide range of ages hunting, everyone is instructed to stop after 10 eggs. My older nieces and nephews reminisced about the days when the hunt was not so structured. There were no limits, so it was a wild scramble. They said they felt the pressure as they ran around as fast as possible to find eggs, but agreed it built character and made them tougher. Doesn’t every generation think they had it harder than the next generation?
Knowing that I usually find an Easter egg hidden somewhere in the garden in the summertime, one of my great-nephews hid an egg out there for me to find later. How sweet. Also, in between rains, several kids went out with their umbrellas and looked for four-leaf clovers. I pay $1 for each one! Fortunately for my pocketbook, they only found one. It is tiny, but it has four leaves, so it counts!