miniature daffodils

After the Snow, Spring?

Our recent snowfall is almost a memory. We’ve gone from this…

front garden, snow, Christmas 2017
A previous year’s snow; I tried to ignore the latest one so didn’t take any pictures, but it looked just like this here a couple of weeks ago.

To this…

The last remnant of a giant Pooh Bear made of snow that turned up on the boulevard. It was five feet tall! Sad, isn’t it? Note the dandelion.

It’s still unseasonably cool. The therapeutic effect of warm temperatures and sun hasn’t arrived, although the patient plants are trying to pick up where they left off in January.
The garden has that battered and squashed look produced by two bouts of strong northeast winds, days of below freezing temperatures, and almost a foot of the white stuff.

Today I went looking for photo-worthy sights in the garden and didn’t manage to find much. The old stuff looks tired and beaten-up, and the new stuff hasn’t really started.

oriental hellebore, snowdrop foliage
Dark purple hellebore flowers amid flattened old foliage and gone-over snowdrops. Not pretty.

tulip foliage, green and white striped ribbon grass,
Ribbon grass (Phalaris) amid sprouting tulips (Tulipa saxatilis), which will have nice pink and yellow flowers… someday.

Iris reticulata, tulip foliage, dalylily foliage, sprouting, black mondo grass
Iris reticulata with sprouting daylilies and more T. saxatilis. Also some black mondo grass (Ophiopogon planiscapus), which is really resilient and cool but not flashy.

Now back to making lists of things to do: cut down old stalks, tidy up beds, prepare mulch, distribute mulch, seed tomatoes, foxgloves, and verbena, set out new plants, work on the soaker hose revival project, finish pruning… Rush to get it all done before summer arrives.

30 comments

  3. And yet Nature always come back. My Dad, very much a gardener used to say ‘They want to live. They always want to live,
    I inadvertently left a storage box over a place where some of my wife’s mini-daffodils were planted. When I move this there were these flattened yellow shoots determined to grow. I moved the bin and within 12 hrs they were standing tall. Still yellow(ish) but growing

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  5. Nature is resilient. Our four pots of pansies have survived since December with one polar express visit where the temperature did not get above freezing for 3 days, three snowstorms, too much rain to count, and a few windstorms that required us to take down our wreath for the first time in two years. One looks a bit bedraggled because the new flowers are not out and the other three look brand new.

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    1. I haven’t brought the tender geraniums (pelargoniums) inside for years now. They’ve wintered outside, against the house wall, with various covering materials placed over them. Many plants are tougher than we suspect.

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    2. In California I have seen geraniums growing almost wild, if they can get enough water. When I was a librarian at Ft Ord, near Monterey, they grew up each Spring around some of the old WWII buildings that used to be on post. Now most of the old post is Cal State Monterey Bay and most of the old buildings with their geranium attendants are gone.

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      1. It’s a fun surprise to see plants you think of as tender growing semi-wild. I remember being surprised by a small hedge of jade plant in San Francisco. To me, it’s an indoor plant (although I lug mine outside for the summer). I really ought to go somewhere tropical for more of these experiences–and others too, of course!

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    1. It will look even better once the tulips bloom. I’m hoping I get a power surge of energy once it warms up a bit. We had mixed rain and snow for a while this morning; on the plus side, it’s good writing weather!

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