Good morning, and change is in the air! Welcome to Saturday Morning Garden Blogging.
The Winds of Change have been blowing strongly here. What? That's not Obama, but the Chinooks?
Whatever. For the past several days, down slope winds have made this the wild, warm, windy west.
Yesterday the high was 62°; it was so warm we had the windows open and the furnace off. The morning low was 47° — what is our typical high this time of year.
But another change is coming — a cold front arrives today, bringing highs in the mid-30s, lows in the teens, and some snow. But after a couple of days of winter weather, the forecast calls for popping back up into the 50s — a typical winter-in-Denver pattern.
But I'm glad we got to greet the New Year with blooming hyacinth here at the Casa.
This variety is Deft Blue, a type I've not tried forcing before. I bought them because they were touted as one of the earliest forcers — and boy howdy, are they! This batch has been out of cold storage and at room temperature since Thanksgiving; the buds started opening right at Christmas and were fully open by New Years. I will be using them again; they are perfect for making forced-bulb kits for Christmas giving.
I also bought a pink variety, Fondant, which also is an early forcer. The first batch of those haven't quite bloomed yet, as I didn't bring them to full room temperature until mid-December. But they promise just as good of results as the Deft Blue. It is so nice to have the whiffs of hyacinth as we face down the worst of winter.
The Christmas detritus has all been packed away; the fir needles vacuumed up; the house put pretty much back in order. It always surprises me how much space we have when the Christmas tree is out of the living room. The work of putting Christmas back in boxes gives me a shove at clearing out a lot of accumulated stuff, sorting through and either filing away or throwing out the random stacks of papers and junk that spring from entropy.
In the process, I uncovered the seed and plant catalogs I'd set aside. Yesterday I started flipping through them, turning down corners and oohing and ahhing over the possibilities. Today I pull out the remains of last year's seeds, and see what I need (as opposed to want) to order. It's just a few weeks until it's time to start the tomatoes.
That's what's happening here. What's going in your gardens?