Forcing Cut Branches to Bloom by Nancy Shepard

 

Photo: Nancy Shepard

To help celebrate spring, I usually search the grocery stores for live pussy willows. This year they were hard to find. Yet on an accidental trip to Trader Joe’s I bought some reddish brown twigs with buds with no label. White or pink blooms or something else?

After measuring the branch length for my vase, I cut the bottoms on an angle then slightly smashed the cut bottoms and stuck them in water. The angled cut and smashing helped the branches take up water. In three days I had dainty pink flowers. Maybe cherry? Or plum? They have lasted over a week and are now sprouting leaves.

Iron Chlorosis by Vicky Vahling

 

Lilac leaf
Photo by Vicky Vahling

I have lived in my house for 20 years and have never really spent any time maintaining my Lilac bush. This spring I pruned all the dead branches out and dug out all the new suckers that had started to get out of hand. The Lilac bush looked great and was really starting to flourish until the middle of summer when the leaves started turning yellow on all the new growth with the leaf veins staying green. Then the leaves started to turn brown around the edges and began dropping from the plant.