Hope and spring bulbs rise eternal… From commentor JeffG166:
3.15.2024
Bloodroots growing. Thought they had died off.
Bonus reading:
For Women's History Month, a look at some trailblazers in American gardening and horticulture https://t.co/BBTyaLS8Sc
— The Associated Press (@AP) March 6, 2024
Jane Colden, Beatrix Farrand, Carrie Lippincott — and Fanny Lou Hamer!
***********
Our earliest daffodils — the ones in the south-facing bed by the heat-leaking basement windows — are also beginning to bloom. I’m gonna have to risk cleaning out that bed, despite my superstitious fear of encouraging an unseasonable snowstorm…
What’s going on in your gardens, this week?
JPL
The daffodils finished blooming days ago, and now it’s the azaleas and creeping cherry tree’s turn. the hosta is emerging from their winter sleep and spring is here.
Jay
Weird, but interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Cwk19gCzEA
Since mid Feb, It has been unseasonably warm here. T shirt and shorts weather, many days. Chives are up, thyme, oregano, the lilies are budding. Weird year.
bjacques
The neighbor’s magnolia tree is only just starting to bloom. I’m sure last year it bloomed earlier. Where’s your global warming now!?1!
NotMax
@JPL
“‘Tis spring, ’tis spring
The bird is on the wing
But that’s absurd
The wing is on the bird”
– anonymous
;)
eclare
@JPL:
Pretty much the same here in Memphis.
satby
After several way warmer than average days, after tonight lows here will fall back way below zero for the next 5 days with no insulating snow cover just as the spring bulbs were really getting going and the fruit trees were sprouting buds. A late freeze like this caused most of my lilacs to die back to their roots and killed one outright. Now the replacement lilac is showing beginning blossoms for the first time in 4 (?) years since it was planted. So today I’m going to be deeply watering everything I intend to try to cover up to see if I can save them. 😩
mrmoshpotato
@Jay: Lilies, delicious lilies.
mrmoshpotato
@satby: We have had some weird weather this “winter.”
Low of 25 forecast for tonight.
MagdaInBlack
I’ve seen nothing blooming as of Friday, but at work the grape vines, the flowering crab and the burning bush are all showing buds. AND! along my commute thru the forest preserves, the spring peepers in the ponds are singing. That is spring to me.
Jay
@mrmoshpotato:
Yup,
But it’s weird.
I should be wearing long underwear, fleece, topped with Gortex,
and I am wearing shorts and a Tshirt, have been for 3 weeks.
Today, we hit 90 degrees.
eclare
@Jay:
Holy shit! 90? Wow.
satby
@mrmoshpotato: Yep, a hard freeze that will really do some damage to any early blooms. Especially since lows like that will repeat every night until Saturday here. And the freeze is potentially going pretty far south.
Sometimes I hate gardening.
mrmoshpotato
@Jay:
What the? Aren’t you up in Canadia?
Jay
@eclare:
Yup,
Wreck Beach, ( the naked one) weather,
It should be wet and cold, and it’s not.
It’s freaken hot.
Jay
@mrmoshpotato:
Yurp.
We should be having wet cold rain and snow flurries.
We arn’t.
Jeffg166
Everything is opening in Philadelphia. There are two potential 30° nights, Wednesday and Thursday of this week. If they happen a lot of things are going to take a hit.
Jeffg166
@satby: I read somewhere a lilac takes 7 years to bloom when moved.
PAM Dirac
We had a spell of warm weather (4 straight days with highs in the 70s) here in Maryland. The daffodils are in full bloom and our weeping cherry has busted out. Got a lot of garden work done. Almost all the roses have been pruned and most of the flower beds have been cleaned. I have started pruning in the vineyard with 2 out of 12 rows rough pruned and tied down. Everything should be finished in a week or so. Normal bud break is about the last week in April and it is very hard to tell if it is going to be any different this year. Also got 3 white wines and 1 rose from the 2023 harvest in the bottle (95 bottles total) and I am very happy with how they taste now. They should get a bit better as they settle in. ’23 was a great year. The reds will be bottled sometime this summer.
satby
@Jeffg166: I’ve read as early as 5 depending on maturity. I had high hopes that I would get blooms the year of the freeze since several showed signs, but instead got a kill freeze. I replaced the one that died with a large size transplant from ? that was at least a 2 year old plant, so it’s now 6. I can see the purple in the buds. So I hope we can get through the week with insulating covers.
Jeffg166
@satby: The one I moved took seven years to flower again. Looks like the buds this year will take a hit unless the forecast changes for Wednesday and Thursday nights.
Albatrossity
This might be a great thread to mention a great book by my friend, the poet and writer Camille Dungy. I think many of the Balloon Juice jackaltariat would love this book; she writes with great wisdom. If you haven’t yet run across this in your reading, check it out. Soil – The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden.
kalakal
Can’t have all those lovely spring bulbs here. Not that I’m at all jealous.
Currently flowering, Hibiscus, Hippeastrums, Blue Daze and some spready thing with tall white flower spikes I’ve never identified.
Coming soon: Gardenias and Passion Flowers – the passion flower has never really flowered much ( I kept it because swallow tails seem to love it for egg laying) but this year has loads of flowers
delphinium
@Jeffg166: Lovely flower pics!
My chives came up a few weeks ago and the daffodils and hyacinths are just about ready to bloom; no buds yet on any of the trees in my yard. Was mid-50s yesterday but will go back down to the 30s with overnight temps below freezing starting Monday.
delphinium
@Albatrossity: Thanks for the info-sounds like a great read.
Albatrossity
@delphinium: It is. Here’s a good review by Renata Golden.
And if some creative writing program near you ever invites her for a reading, it would be worth your time, for sure. These are often off the radar for most folks, but check out her website for upcoming events
Jeffg166
@delphinium: This is the nail biting time of year when things come out too soon then might have to face freezes.
The sour cherry tree in the garden is budding up. That really shouldn’t happen for another two weeks to be safe.
St. Patrick’s Day is the day to plant potatoes in this area.p
Miss Bianca
Meanwhile, here in the central mountains of Colorado, I am up to my ass in snow.
And yeah…I do mean literally.
WaterGirl
@satby: way below zero, or way below freezing.
We are getting the latter, but not the former.
WaterGirl
Today I’m grateful that I don’t have my cherry tree anymore, so I at least don’t have to worry about the freeze destroying all the flower buds on that.
oldgold
As I transformed West of Eden’s lawn from a few spears of blue grass and a vast array of weeds to glechoma hederacea, I left a wee patch of clover. This Spring I was rewarded by finding an exceedingly rare oxalis deppe.
I picked this lucky charm and decided to iron it flat with intention of displaying this icon of good fortune in a frame over the kitchen table. Unfortunately the iron was too hot and my 4 leaf clover melted into green mush.
I learned the perils of pressing one’s luck too far.
Miss Bianca
@oldgold: *GROAN*!!
schrodingers_cat
I went to the Spring Bulb Show at Smith College arboretum last week. Took tons of pictures. AL would you like me to send them to you?
JPL
@schrodingers_cat: I do!
StringOnAStick
I got 4 yards of mulch delivered yesterday and I’m half way through spreading it. My goal was to get the native plant front yard munched before the Tete a Tete daffodils bloomed so I wouldn’t fill their cute little cups with mulch; I managed that with only moments to spare because a few actually open within an hour of being mulched. Talk about timing!
I’ve got two more days in the 60’s before it gets back to the seasonal norm of high 40’s so I’m getting the veggie garden ready to plant peas in a few weeks. Looks like another long day outside but I like getting ready as early in the year as I can, and it’s too warm for the skiing to be any good.
WaterGirl
@schrodingers_cat: I’m sure she would!
JAM
Does anyone know if an oakleaf hydrangea needs covered in a light freeze? I just planted mine last year and the leaves are unfolding now. It gets morming sun. We will supposedly only get down to 32 for about an hour.
My daffodils are finishing up now and the redbud is blooming and full of honeybees. The strawberries I planted last year are blooming, too. Yesterday I saw a tiger swallowtail flying through my yard.
Kristine
Grass is greening. Crocuses are opening. The forsythia had one tiny flower at ground level. Daffs are forming buds—I hope the current cold snap doesn’t dent them. Chilly week ahead, with nights below freezing. Hoping I dodge the worst given I live in the thin strip along the lake that’s Zone 6 now.
The thing that really bothers me is that the pussy willow catkins are opening early thanks to the stretches of unseasonable warmth but it will be too cold for the bees to take advantage—it’s one of the first, if not the first, food source they see in the spring. I hope the cold slows that down.
satby
@JAM: If it really only goes to 32° for an hour, they should be fine.
JAM
@satby: Thanks! It only had one flower last year, but I hope I might get more this year.
Anne Laurie
YES, please! — more photos!
Gvg
Azaleas almost done. Woodland phlox, white violets, Japanese roof iris Banana shrub going strong. Bush alamanda, and calycanthus just opening.
recovering from Covid this week left me really tired, but I couldn’t go anywhere and when awake it felt better outside than laying in bed so zi did some really light gardening. Planted a bunch of things I had bought, gave away some other extras. I like to propagate and sometimes don’t have anywhere to put them. Then I tackled mom’s seed stash she gave me, requesting zinnias and anything else I felt like starting for her. Realized some seeds were from 2005 but some recent. So I did the newer seeds then comptemplated the rest. Finally sowed the really old ones in bigger pots to see if I get any germination. If I do I may have to transplant into multiple pots, but I can so that. Books say they should mostly be dead, but mom would not like just throwing them away. People gave them to her etc. Who knows? But I couldn’t see sowing hundreds of seeds in individual cells to get close to nothing. Now her stash is almost clear…until 15 years from now maybe.