Sunday, May 12, 2013

Cold Weather in the Forecast Cold Weather in the Forecast

Red stemmed, red flowered trillium with mottled leaves

















Well, I mowed the lawn, at least in the back yard.  What little lawn is in the front is alive, but not growing.  Also, not greening up are a couple three-foot sections of my privet hedge.   The buds of my forsythia froze.  Now with frost in the forecast each night through Monday I am concerned for the apricot which has been in full bloom for three days (which is three weeks later than usually and seven weeks later than last year).

After a near fruitless year last year and with Spring so late this year, contemplating a  hard frost now, let's not.

I realized with the deep leaf mulch in my shrub and tree border along the alley way that I have missed a big opportunity to plant this hedge with spring ephemerals.  Each year I tell myself this poor trillium needs a better place to be than competing with the hydrangea and lily of the valley. This year when I noticed the purple tipped eyes I transplanted the majority of it to the shrub border.  Upon emergence it is very similar in root structure to the lily of the valley.  Rather than transplant something as aggressive as the lily of the valley to my border I left a pip of this to compete against the lily of the valley.  Even so the part I moved already appears much bigger than it has in other years.

I also planted seven Virginia bluebells into this border along with the stray daffodils coming up in places I never remember planting them (Those ants, again!).

Very little has really leafed out.  Within the last two days there is a shimmer of green, tender leaves to be burnt by frost has appeared on some trees.  My katsura tree has tender baby leaves.  My pear and 'jade' crabapple are loaded down with buds.

Of all things, my sweet autumn clematis appears dead.I'm still crossing my fingers for it, though.  It showed no signs of distress last growing season, and I kept it watered throughout its bloom.  My roses, which I will admit are in protected spots all seem to be leafing out.  The village's 200 Knockouts along our main avenue mostly died out, at least to the ground, after doing well for five years,  A lot of finger crossing there, too.

The family garden has been too wet to till, so the potatoes are still uncut and not planted.   I guess fall potatoes it is.  In  the potager, I have planted a handful of shallots, a few spring onion, three savoy cabbage seedlings, and a couple varieties of lettuce, and seeded some broccoli.

And as today is Mother's Day, I am seeing streams of posts from gardeners honoring their mothers, including a post by one of my sisters who posted a link to a time lapse of our ultimate mother, the earth. 

Happy Mothers' Day.


6 comments:

  1. Same to you. I hope the frost damage is minimal.

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    1. A touch of frost on my cherries, an annual planted pot which I had covered but the wind blew off. (Hate that! Invariably when I have to cover things in the spring and fall there is so much wind!) I think things which froze a bit will grow out of it, though.

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  2. Virginia Bluebells are always a great plant to add. I only have two, but they hold a dear place in my garden. I've heard they are pretty easy from seed, no?

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    1. I've seen them spread by rhizomes and seeds pretty easily where they are happy. I think the last place I had one was not the bluebells happy place. I think this area will be better. It has more natural leaf mold cover and more sun in the early spring and more water.

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  3. Good old trillium! I'm glad you are looking after them. I feel like you are gardening at maybe the South Pole with that weather. But the roses are standing by you. (I think of you whenever I check on rose Eden.) Sending you West Coast waves of warm...

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  4. Gardening at one of the poles, surely. I am so worried that some of the things that haven't yet leafed out are going to die what with repeated bud freezes. My gardening neighbor and I were talking about roses and we realized there are really only about five that actually grow well here. The Eden is really an anomaly, not sure how it is doing as well as it does. I keep looking at clematis Josephine as it is budding out, thinking you would so enjoy it. I keep thinking about rooting some cuttings.

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