Hellebores Late Winter Clean-Up - February 204

On the first of February (2 weeks ago today), I noticed the pink tips of the Hellebores had emerged from the mulch in their annual late Winter arrival.   Those pink tips and buds were accompanied by the previous year's foliage - which persisted through the Winter.  With the temps in the 40's yesterday after work, I decided to get out there to clean-up the foliage.  Here, below, is the 'before' photo - with all of the green leaves on the plants:

And, here below, is the 'after' photo.  Looks like a messy pile of oak leaves laying on the ground.  But, if you look closely, you'll notice some peeks of pink.  I've left the leaves in place (for now) as a little bit of extra protection until we do a proper cleanup in the beds.

Here, below, are a few more looks at this year's Hellebores being protected by Oak leaves.

I considered a 'chop and drop' for the foliage - where I'd trim-off and then cut-down into smaller pieces the stems and leaves and just leave them scattered in the bed.  But, I decided to collect them.  I tried to cut everything up a little bit and put it in a bucket:

With all those browns collected since Fall in the compost bins, a little bit of 'greens' is helpful to get the activity going in the bins as the weather warms up.  Below, is a look at the Hellebores foliage on top of my bins.  (The bins are F-U-L-L.  But, I'm already seeing some compaction happen in just a couple of weeks of warming temperatures.)