A metaphor, perhaps, from Seattle, by dedicated landscape designer / photographer Dan B:
We’ve gone to 27° the last two nights and the Hellebores are wilted.
We’re only above freezing for five hours and below freezing for eighteen or so.
And a picture of Seattle from Lake Washington this last Spring. On the upper left is an orange building that was Amazon headquarters years ago. It’s on the north end of the hill we live on, Beacon Hill, named after a Boston landmark.
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The drooping magenta plants have their own beauty, but I’ll admit I prefer the defiance of the white hellebore in the second photo!
What’s going on in your garden (planning / preps / memories), this week?
MagdaInBlack
Snowed a wee bit over-night in Chicago-land and then up to 47 today. Ruby the Giant Geranium is over-wintering quite well this year. Minimal shedding and even a couple blooms. That’s my garden update
p.s. Ruby is 11 years old.
Jeffg166
Forty-five days until spring. We are halfway through.
I scratched up some soil to sprinkle clarkia seeds on the ground. See if they germinate in a month or so.
Van Buren
Just yesterday Mrs. Van Buren was bewailing how poor the hellebore looks as compared to previous years. I confessed I don’t really look at the garden closely enough to notice during the winter. I’m guessing that this winter being a bit colder than the last few explains it.
satby
I hope Dan B’s garden survives the cold snap! I know I’ve lost 3 pots of begonias that I’ve overwintered inside for years now. My own fault too, I moved them outside on a relatively mild day (above freezing) to make room for a guy pulling up carpet in the space, then forgot to move them back inside and the temperature plunged into single digit highs in a day. When I realized it I just left them to their fate. And bought new begonia tubers.
sab
We moved last summer. I am old and swore to husband I would never be tied down to another garden. But those hellebores are enticing.
sab
@satby: Have you ever had a fungus fly infestation? They came in on our chrysanthemums.
I put the mums out to freeze, but the flies killed both my meyer lemon trees.
I put vinegar traps out and those caught a few of them, but they are all over the basement. Mostly they die, but a few have moved upstairs.
ETA I hate using insecticides around cats.
The cats haven’t even noticed the flies. Vinegar traps work best around the basement drain. I think they (the flies) are breeding there.
Spanky
“Well, it’s Groundhog Day … again.
HAPPY CANDLEMAS!
satby
@sab: I’ve used stuff like this. Basically a drain enzyme gunk cleaner, but got good results.
Gloria DryGarden
@Spanky: happy candlemas
stinger
@MagdaInBlack:
Criminy!
Mike S. (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)
@sab: Organic controls for Fungus gnats on indoor plants I use beneficial nematodes and yellow sticky traps to monitor the population. (Sorry for the Amazon links, but that’s where I can get them at a good price)
NemaKnights – Slow release nematode granules
Safer blrand household yellow sticky traps. I‘d make sure to keep these up where cats can’t rub against them but they work great for monitoring the population as well as killing a significant number of fungust gnats (and whiteflies too if any are around!)
MagdaInBlack
@stinger: The temperature or the aged geranium?
Geo Wilcox
@sab: Boiling hot water down the drain will kill them pretty well. Do it every other day for a month and they will all be gone.
Gvg
Back to shirtsleeve weather here in Florida. Yesterday was freeze damage clean up. Today too probably. More damage than most years. The week long freeze of 2 weeks ago came suddenly after a long cool moderate winter. The week prior had also been shirtsleeves days even for wimpy Floridians. So the plants were not acclimated to cold and were easily damaged by cold that they could have tolerated better if it had been cooler before the freeze.
Lots of damage, possible losses, but other plants are back to normal. I picked camellias yesterday. Roses have buds. People are raking leaves so I shall drive around and get bags of them for mulch and compost.
also digging up extras to give away. Sister wants bird berry native plants for a boy scout project. She is a troop leader. And mom always wants extras for her master gardener sales which is going to be in May. Dig baby plants now to grow and sell in a few months. The Master Gardeners make thousands from their own yards extras every year. Plus a few from daughters gardens a guess.
stinger
@MagdaInBlack:
Ruby’s age! Impressive!
We might hit 50 today, which would break records. I’ve lived in one place for 40 years — 5 miles from where I lived the first 18 years of my life — and believe me, the climate has already changed. The 18-year-old me would never recognize winters now.
stinger
@Gvg: I wanted to tell you, from last week’s garden post, that I get a lot of roses from Heirloom Roses, including my thriving Honorine de Brabant. She’s in stock!
Living in Florida, you may typically buy roses locally, but I get all mine through mail order, and Heirloom Roses and David Austin both do a great job of packing and shipping.
Dan B
It’s snowed here and supposed to get down to 25° by Tuesday. We’re already losing some plants.
BTW The white flowers are a hybrid Camellia named Buttermint. They’ll probably freeze this week. They’re not as tough as Camellia sasanqua, Winter Blooming Camellia.