Cutting the Grass

We had a warm period in late February that melted all the snow and ice, including the hazardous area behind the enclosed back porch that gets little in the way of sun. The melting allowed me to put out feeders for the first time in a week. Birds were singing in profusion and I knew spring would be here soon.

The largest of the three ornamental grasses, October 2023
(Margo D. Beller)

So would the spring chores.

There are certain plants that should be left alone over the winter, and there are plants I don't bother to cut back in autumn because it is tiring to work around, over and behind the deer netting.

Now that I have more time to go birding during the week, I have little inclination to go out on the weekend when plenty of people with kids are at the parks. So on March 1, knowing from the weather forecast the wind would start blowing and the temperature would fall during the day, I went out into the garden. 

There are many chores I do in the spring. One is digging out finished compost, which I do sporadically. (I did it last year.) Another is deadheading the plants I left standing. The most important, however, is cutting back the ornamental grasses. 

Ornamental grasses are wonderful plants. They grow tall and wide and the deer don't eat them because the leaves, at least on the type I have, are thin and spiky. But like all plants, including my beloved daffodils (another plant deer don't eat because all parts are poisonous, including the flowers), when the growing season is done there is foliage to cut back. A lot of foliage.

After a long period of dryness we had rain in November
2024 and the grass went from brown to more of a gold
color not seen well in this photo.
(Margo D. Beller)

I was not ready to start work in the garden but I knew this had to be done because eventually the daffodils and other plants in this particular area were going to start growing. The three grasses I have were pummeled by rain, snow and especially wind. The northwest wind blew hard for much of the winter, another sign of changes in the climate as the Earth's oceans continue to warm.

So I planned to attack the plants from the rear. Except I discovered behind one of them that the daffodils had started growing much earlier than usual, even before the crocus, thanks to the unusual pattern of warm weather than followed this season's very cold winter. I also found the irises I had put here after dividing the ones in the front yard were growing, too. So on this particular grass my strategy had to change. (Getting to the other two to cut them back was easier.)

I was glad to see the plants had survived, tho' disturbed by how early they had shown up. The other week I was walking along one of my usual birding areas, Patriots Path, once the ice had melted and saw a phoebe. This flycatcher, a harbinger of spring migration, should've shown up in mid-March, not Feb. 25. And yet here it was, in an area by the Whippany River where I have seen and heard them before. Now that it has become cold and windy again, will it find the food it needs to survive?

I wondered that about the yard birds, too, when I couldn't risk falling on the ice to put the feeders out (a hungry squirrel that could jump over the baffle was another factor). But they managed and were quickly at the feeders once I put them out.

The largest of the grasses before the cutting in 2024.
(Margo D. Beller)

Back to the grasses. It took about two hours to cut the three of them, the largest of them taking the most time. When I was nearly done with that one the wind picked up strong, forcing me to hold down what I had piled in a large pail for composting until things calmed down. But now you can see the growing daffodils the foliage had covered.

As for the other grass - the lawn - it is still brown from its winter dormancy. Eventually it, too, will green and grow and the area will be filled with the noise and smell of lawn mowers. For now, in the renewed cold, it is quiet out there.

Which reminds me, once again I need a spring haircut, too. 

Grasses cut, daffodils exposed after last
March's cutting. (Margo D. Beller)