The fish are disgusted: days are in the mid fifties and nights at about mid twenties. So there’s all this sunlight, and yet frost enough to keep them from eating.
We soaked seeds of morning glory and moonflower for opposite sides of the Moon Gate, the clematis is coming up, so is alyssum and johnny jump-up; peonies are reaching for the light; so is heuchera; and we are planting flats of green beans and sugar snap peas because we need a screen—we got pole beans, (that’s green beans of a climbing disposition) and climbing peas, and are getting a wire screen that will turn into a green leafy visual barrier with sweetpea and edible beans (similar leaves: one flowers, the other flowers inconspicuously and provides food). And when done for the year, you fold up the wire screens (Gardeners Supply) and store them for the winter. Tulips are coming up: so is grape hyacinth and crocus. Iris is putting up new shoots. The ground covers like Irish Moss, fake strawberry, creeping this and that, Scotch Moss, and hen and chicks are all 8 times their former size and grew all through the winter, while turning mostly red. The waterfall is of course going. We’ve taken the cover off the patio furniture and will start having breakfast out there when the night temperatures aren’t 22 degrees.
It feels good to get out and putz with growing things. We have this little break-down greenhouse (shelves like an etagere covered in zippered plastic sheeting) that we have preserved through all these moves, and it is full of last years geraniums, dried and saved and now rewatered; and new peonies and heuchera; and the flats of things. We have yet to start the sweetpeas. We’re going to get another plastic flat and fill it with flower seed. It’s so much fun to watch the plants start up.
The food of choice for koi awakening is Cheerios. But not yet. It would harm them to feed them until they have warm tummies round the clock.
Oh, but I look forward to breakfasts beside the pond.
It sounds just lovely,I have to confine myself to
house plants now,but your descriptions brought each one to the minds eye. A gorgeous sunscreen that a friend had one year was of hops. The birds
love the flowers and they are good for stuffing a
pillow to sleep gently. In the fall the leaves turned scarlet. I believ that they are perennials.
Hops, eh? I think they will grow up here. I don’t know a thing about brewing, but I hear we raise pretty good ones. On the other hand, we are very fond of fresh green beans, steamed with a little cooked hickory smoked bacon. Yum! A supper, just of the beans! Toss in a few sugar snap peas—twice yum!
Ummmmmm! I love beans too! Hickory smoked bacon is
the main ingredient in many, many wonderful dishes!
You cook the bacon, pour off most of the grease, add the green beans, steam, stir, serve. Yum!
I do this one with fresh baby brussel sprouts for Thanksgiving…..I usually saute a few shallots and mushrooms too. Also excellent with spinach. If you can find of a source of local bacon it becomes wondrous indeed!
Speaking of food, it’s Girl Scout Cookie time. I know, cookies, indulgence etc. but come on it for the GIRL SCOUTS!
This post left me (as a transplanted Englishman in nigh-seasonless Southern Califonia) pining for real seasons, as I was used to.
Realistically, it’s not that here doesn’t have seasons, but they’re not the ones I grew up knowing.
I remember a conversation with Marion Zimmer Bradley in which she lamented that her trees never shed leaves, and she missed it mightily. It was, for me, a whole new way of looking at the climate—I’ve always lived where leaves fall. Up here in Washington, however, only half the trees shed autumn leaves—but, boy! do our 40′ hemlocks shed needles in the fall! First big windstorm and we’ve got little short needles everywhere. In our city parks, where they have Ponderosa pine, with their half-foot needles, they have the city crews rake them up for compost.
Having breakfast with you on a patio when the nighttime temp was “above” 22 degrees sounds like breakfast on the balcony with ‘Sidi-ji! Brrr. 😉
I’ve got to do some patching on my sprinkler system this weekend. (Here’s a tip… when you go to start your lawnmower, make sure it’s not sitting on a sprinkler head.) I’m waiting for my ground cover to wake up. It hasn’t grown much over the winter, but I think that may be because it has been pretty shaded by the live oak. I’m thinking that as the sun moves, it will get some more light. And the chinese pistache and my new crepe myrtle are leafing out, so the April pictures should look different than the multiple months of winter I have. This is new landscaping, so I am trying to take a picture at the start of each month so I can see how it is progressing.
*Dried* Geraniums? Now how do you do that? I’ve been keeping cut back geraniums in the garage all winter and watering them. Drying would be so much easier!
Well, it worked in Oklahoma. I have some pretty shriveled objects stuck in pots right now: I’ll let you know.
The procedure as in Oklahoma: let the plant start to die back, starve it of water, then pull it before a freeze turns it mushy. Many people hang them from their garage rafters for the winter.
Come warmer weather, soak the roots in a pan of water, then plant and cross your fingers. We’re pushing it: we’ve put the resurrectees in pots and put them in our little greenhouse, which is an upright, not a cold-frame (groundlevel glassed-in box): it has sheet plastic with zippers, so it is not as cold-proof as a cold-frame; and we are hoping it is enough for Eastern Washington’s 50-degree days and 20-degree nights.
Theoretically you can do the same with begonia: but I’m death on begonias. I always have to buy new ones, no matter how I struggle to keep them.
Plants that wintered in the ground here: peony, rose, johnny jumpup (blooming), alyssum (blooming, as single white flower, but Jane swears these are weeds! I think they’re young alyssum); also rhodys, various mosses and groundcovers. Tulips and daylily and musca are up; and of our water grasses, equisetum and corkscrew reed are doing nicely.
And one of the currently indoor plants: I want spider mums, which can’t be had commercially. So I cut the heads off blooming ones, and planted the stems in sand with root stimulant. They are still going, though they have no live leaves; the stems are green, and have leaf-buds at the joints; so I am hoping when we get past frost here that these will thrive in the garden.
Thanks for that – I’ll give it a try next winter. It’s not something that anyone I know has tried in the UK so I will spread the word!
When I was very young there was a gardener who wintered over masses of bare root geraniums. I know he did not have a greenhouse but he always had enough plants to give them to all the children at the church Easter celebration. I would grow mine all winter. I remember walking down my street during one snowstorm and looking up at my bedroom window, full of bright red blooms in all the winter gray.
If you have space in your greenhouse jugs of water will heat up during the day and keep the temp a little warmer at night.
The daffodils on the south side of my house are in bloom…..columbine and bleeding heart growing nicely….the mums are up…..almost ready for cuttings.
It’s going to freeze tonight, and snow. After all the peaches and plums are blooming. Waaaaah!! It already snowed four times this winter, which is three or four times more than usually. This norther should just turn around and blow right back to Canada!
Waah, indeed. Down in Oklahoma we could prophesy the weather by three infallible means: a) if the apricots bloomed it would freeze (April). And b) if the peonies bloomed, it would hail (June.) And if the gladioli bloomed (July) it would come a 60 mph gale.
We’re having an uncommonly warm spell here in the Boston area this weekend: it’s around 70 and I’ve been merrily “late-winter” pruning my roses, apple trees, elderberry bushes, butterfly bush and generally cleaning up the garden. Snowdrops (just planted this fall) are coming out, some purple and yellow crocuses are blooming in the front of the house and my first daffodil (hard by the brick chimney on the south facing side of the house) just started opening up!!! I even went down in the basement and hauled up the blue and green Adirondack chairs and we ate lunch out on the patio on them! Joy, bliss… makes up for the three day Northeaster and 10 inches of rain last weekend and the bailing, pumping and hovering with worry over the basement. It’ll be back in the 40’s soon enough but today is heaven.
We just bought some heather and bog rosemary. A lovelorn and confused honeybee is following us about as we set these out. Especially the heather. But the fishes have come out to sun, so they think it’s fine weather. The greenhouse froze last night, but we were too late for the sun yesterday in getting it started. Today it is basking in about 80-90 degrees inside, and will be slower to freeze should we get another freeze.
It is now the vernal equinox, and it should be the last of the really hard freezes.
I’m jealous it’s warm enough to start gardening, and I wish I was there with you. Our first day of spring consisted of below freezing temps all day and 6 inches of snow, last time I looked out. The blooming crocus are probably alright, but the daffies were on the verge of blooming here in the KC area. I hope everything comes through but I’m not hopeful. Rats.
I bought heather a few years ago but it all died over the first winter. It looks so wonderful in the Seattle area, where I got the idea, but that is a far more temperate climate than we have in the Northeast.
I had hoped it would provide a complete ground cover to help with my weeds – I have huge struggles with weeds. When we moved into our house there was all that weed plastic everywhere, which I, in my supremely arrogant ignorance, ripped up, with predictable and devastating results. I think I have to figure out how to put it back down around the roses and lilies at least. I spend far too much time weedng and far too little time sitting on the porch helping the flowers bloom 😀
Groundcover: Try Irish or Scotch moss, creeping speedwell, and johnny jump-ups. Might live. Most of our winters are snowy, and our temperatures get down to -10 in many winters. Also get some largish rocks for your flower area. Rock, if tall enough to get exposed to the sun, conducts and saves heat, doling it out during the night. Our black basalt rock melts out of a snow pretty fast. Also rather than that sheet plastic, try weed cloth: it breathes better, doesn’t mold, water goes through it. Plus bark mulch to a depth of 4″ just about everywhere: we imported half a dumptruck load (7 yards). When winter comes, rake deep mulch over everything, then rake it back to make a well in spring, to hold water. It might help. Without that deep mulch we’d lose a lot of plants. With it, our roses thrive when other people’s roses freeze out or get too dry in summer heat.