Who are you calling a pansy?

Happy Mother’s Day to all you moms. I hope you’re being spoiled rotten. You no doubt deserve it.

As for the pansies, I’ve done some research and haven’t really found why or how the term pansy came to mean a sissy. As we all know, pansy plants are anything but. These are some of the toughest and hardiest flowering plants there are. We often see them poking leaves and flowers up through the snow. Try that marigolds! Not a chance.

Now that spring has finally arrived, so have all the garden critters. I saw the first yellow jacket on the first of May. Be sure to get those traps hung out so you can catch these queens before they establish a nest and start laying eggs.

Now that our average last frost day has arrived, we have the green light to start planting annuals. Just be sure to “harden the off” first. If the term isn’t familiar, it just means putting the plants outdoors in a protected location for an increasing amount of time each day for about a week. Be sure to bring them indoors at night at first.

Even though you may have a new “resident” hummingbird or two, you may not see them early in the mornings. This is because they go into something called torpor on cold nights. This just means their little bodies have a way to conserve their heat. Once the daytime temperatures start to warm up, so do they and here they come, hungry!

Speaking of hummers, there is a problem with a lot of new feeders. For some reason, they have been made with yellow parts. This is not a good idea, as yellow is like a welcome flag to wasps. An easy fix is to cover those parts with a bit of red nail polish. Wasps have been known to sting hummingbirds…to death.

If you have Virginia creeper vines, you may want to take a step to keep them looking good this summer. They are very susceptible to a type of bug that loves to suck the juices out of the leaves, which wrecks the looks of the whole vine. Just get some systemic insecticide, dig it in around the roots and water well.

When you’re choosing spring bulbs to plant, be very careful with the lilies as they don’t go dormant like gladiolas and others do. This really shortens their shelf life to where they’re either dried up or rotted. Look these over closely before buying.

While you’re out there digging out dandelions, be on the lookout for another persistent weed. This one is called hairy bittercress. It multiplies in a split second as each tiny plant can shoot up a bloomstalk when the plant is less than the size of a dime. The plants are round and have tiny round leaves and tiny white flowers. They are annuals and start to bloom even earlier than the dandelions.

Now that the rose bushes are leafing out, go ahead and dig some fertilizer around each one. There are some just called “rose food.” They work fine as they have a higher middle number.

This sign was posted near a friend’s front door: “Ring the bell…if no answer, pull some weeds.” Now that’s my kind of sign.

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Elaine Cerny has gardened most of her life, starting in 4-H. She has belonged to garden clubs in three states and is currently serving as secretary for the River City Gardeners Club in Post Falls. Her column appears in The Press every other Sunday from early March until late October.