I was a little worried about my little Kansas garden corner last weekend, what with the freezing rain and the 6 inches of snow. I’m happy to report though that everything in the garden is lovely. My lettuce and radish seedlings did fine under their layer of leaf mulch. Even the columbine and bleeding heart plants look OK. The self-seeded woodland violets look just the same, and our trees all came through the ice-storm without loss of limb. There was some local tree damage and one of neighbors lost a good-sized Scots Pine tree – the weight of ice on the greenery, combined with the sodden ground, caused it to uproot and fall right over on our garden fence. On Monday we could hear tree maintenance going on around us in the form of chainsaws and heavy-duty tree mulching machines. Now everything is pretty much back to normal, except for the sodden ground.
Between the colder weather and the waterlogged soil there’s not been much I can work on outside. I’ve not been busy in the garden for a whole week and I miss it. Plant growth has slowed right down, due to the cold, so there’s not much progress to see. I just checked our forecast: Friday is supposed to be dry and Saturday it should be warmer, upto 70F, but there’s a chance of snow again on Sunday. Ugh! I have plans, but nature is not cooperating. My plans will have to wait. I’ll sit here and dream of strawberries and watermelons, of yard long beans and miniature corn, and of fragrant cups of lavender tea, which some day I hope to make from my own lavender bush. For now I just have packets of seeds and a vision for my garden. Isn’t that a lot of what gardening is about though? It’s the anticipation. It’s the sense of possibility. It’s the ideas we create in our head for our own little garden corner.
What do you dream of?
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My bleeding hearts didn’t survive the April freeze of 2007. I have little patches of bluebells, snowdrops, and crocuses. I dream of huge drifts of them. Even after 5 years, thet’re just not naturalizing very fast.
Hope you avoid the snow!
I also lost a bleeding heart in the freeze of 2007. The one I lost was in a more exposed position than the two that survived.
What a great dream Janet. A drift of snowdrops and bluebells would be beautiful. In Scotland the harebells in the woods are gorgeous and I used to look out for the wild primroses by the edge of countryside roads in spring. The pale yellow flowers always seemed so intense. Thanks for making me thing of that
The one thing that has naturalized for me is the little wood violets. They are turning up in other spots in the garden, where I have to point them out to my hubby so he doesn’t remove them as weeds!
I dream of just not having snow on the ground for a change. It’s melting again, but two days ago it looked like mid-Feb again.
I’m also dreaming of a rain garden. I just got some info from our local extension office and I’m looking forward to implementing something in a low area we have…..
Here’s to the hope that there are no garden losses this year!