Good morning, and I forgot about second winter! Welcome to Saturday Morning Garden Blogging.
When I last posted SMGB two weeks ago, I was anticipating the meet up at ColoTim’s house. It was a lovely time — and along with the spring bulbs, his forsythia bush was just starting to open its sunny yellow flowers.
It was a great gathering, full of great food and conversation, and putting faces to handles. The weather was fairly cooperative, although by late afternoon the clouds had started building and the wind kicked up — a portent of bad things to come.
A major storm was predicted, and we were supposed to get more than a half-foot of snow to go along with much, much colder than normal temperatures and high winds.
Well, the cold and the wind arrived: on Monday April 8, the official high was 72°, and the low was 22°.
On April 9, the high was 22° and the low was 6°.
And in my part of town the snow failed to arrive — we got, maybe, 3”, not nearly enough to insulate the blooming spring bulbs, and the buds on the tulips, the lilac bush and the daphne, from the extreme, record-breaking cold.
After warming up some last weekend, this week we were hit again — well, except the snow actually arrived this time, giving us about 9” and it wasn’t quite as cold — although wet and cold stretch lasted from Monday through Thursday. We only really started to warm up yesterday, when we made it to the 60s.
It’s been really disconcerting to have the color of the sky say spring, and the angle of the sun say spring, but go outside and have it feel like January.
And the garden is a fucking mess — the plants also were thinking it was spring time instead of January. I don’t know how much permanent damage there is. The frost burn on the rosemary is much worse, I haven’t found any sprouts from the peas I planted a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve lost the buds on a lot of the tulips.
But the good news is that my procrastination paid off this year. I had planned to get the melon plants started really early and out in wall-o-waters by this time of year. Alas, time got away from me (that happens more and more as I get older), and I didn’t get them potted until a week ago. As cold as it was wall-o-waters wouldn’t have provided near enough protection.
That's what's happening here. What's going on in your gardens?