Dahlias

Yesterday was my appointed day for the dahlias' annual spring reveal. I hauled them all out of the shed where they'd spent the winter, dry in their pots. There are eight of them altogether, and my plan was to repot them so they'd all have fresh soil for this year's growing season.

Unfortunately, I didn't have enough compost to repot them all completely. So I repotted five of them, and the other three I simply took away the top couple of inches of soil and gave them a fresh layer, figuring at least some of the nutrients from the new compost would filter down into the older soil below. It will be interesting to see if it makes a difference as they grow and bloom.

I once again realized that I have too darn many dahlias. Five of them I grew from seed -- I planted a bunch of seeds and that's how many sprouted, so I didn't have much choice in the matter. Another one grew of its own accord in another plant's pot, presumably a seed that somehow got away. The other two I bought as mature plants.

By the way, when you dig up a dormant dahlia, this is what they look like -- a thick knot of tubers. If I did this the way the experts recommend, I'd wash all the soil off that ball, neatly trim away anything shriveled or dead and repot the tubers in entirely fresh dirt. But I'm going the easy route, so I just brushed them off. If I lost a few dahlias it wouldn't kill me.

Here are some things that are blooming at the moment: Our aquilegia (above)...

...a fancy variegated deadnettle...

...and the candytuft, which persists every year despite the fact that Olga wipes her face on it every evening after she eats. (This is a tough plant -- it's one of the few smaller plants in the garden that's been here longer than we have.)

We've had a few failures, though. I already mentioned our struggling tree fern -- the jury's still out on that one. The foam flower (Tiarella), which looked so healthy in its pot last summer, and which I was so proud of having saved from its crowded, overshadowed location in the flowerbed, failed to come up this spring and when I examined the pot it was completely empty. Not sure what happened there.

Dave got launched successfully yesterday morning and he sent me a text last night that he'd landed safely in Michigan -- in Romulus, the township that includes the Detroit airport. Earlier he'd texted me "Jolan tru," which I did not understand at all -- I replied "Covfefe," thinking he'd simply done some sloppy typing. It turns out that he was about to take off on his connecting flight from Minneapolis, and "Jolan tru" is Romulan (as in "Star Trek") for "goodbye." Dave is officially nerdier than I am when it comes to "Star Trek."

I spent yesterday evening watching "All the President's Men," a movie I have seen a hundred times and could watch a hundred more. It makes me nostalgic for journalism, conversations with demanding editors and smart newsroom repartee. My grandfather and my uncle, both staunch Republicans who lived in Washington, hated The Washington Post for its relentless reporting on Nixon and Watergate -- I'm pretty sure my grandfather called it the Pinko Post, or something like that. I wonder what they'd make of Trump if they were alive. Trump's dogged insistence on loyalty isn't so different from Nixon's "enemies list," and his insecurity and paranoia are very Nixonian as well.