Early spring, maybe not quite so early!

TPP is in St. Louis for a society meeting, the business end of botany.  Spring here is about 2 full weeks ahead of us 150 miles further north, and the star and tulip-flowered magnolias are in bloom here. But a huge front is pushing in from the north west, and lows are expected here in the low 20s (remember 32 is freezing in the crazy F temp scale).  In our area probably even a few degrees lower. Any plant with flowers out will likely get toasted. This is the problem with early springs in the great Midwest.  Our weather patterns are so big and so variable that late and even not so late freezes are more than likely, they are virtually certain.  Stoopid plants just don't know to wait.  TPP's stoopidist plant is certainly our star magnolia, so ours is planted in a cool, slightly shady location, and it flowers a week later than most others, and it this case this just might be enough to save its floral display from frost damage, or maybe not.  It's a wait and see game.  Been too busy to peek at the Missouri Botanical Gardens to see how advance their gardens are.  Even this morning while picking the newspaper up off the front stoop, TPP noticed that the potted pansies were pretty stiff, but they are quite tough plants and once you're frozen, you're frozen.  So we'll see.  Nothing much to worry about in any case, but magnolias are another matter entirely.

Gardening spring fever, exercise spring ferver

As per usual our weather goes from rather cold to warm-hot more or less directly. Our gardens look quite lovely, very colorful with a combination of bulbs, perennials, trees, and shrubs all in flower. Even the spring beauty/violet infested lawn is beautiful, in fact, spring beauty and violets are the lawn. It's the peak for bluebells, our most prominent and numerous wild flower. In one place yellow celandine poppies contrast nicely with the blue, and usually accented by the pink of bleeding hearts, but the freeze of a week ago (what a difference a week makes!) did them damage. For Mrs. Phactor the transition from tax season (very taxing) transitions immediately to garden season. Anyone who wants to experience our whole body garden-your-butt-off exercise program need only stop by and we'll see that you get a workout. Why is it that exercise zealots are never gardeners? Gardening is exercise that accomplishes something, or does that make it work and therefore ineligible as exercise? 
Last week's freeze demonstrated some plants' susceptibility to freezes: flower buds on a Butterflies Magnolia got totally toasted, so did the emerging leaf buds on a Oyama magnolia (and hopefully the damage is not too severe). Yet our tulip and saucer magnolias were unscathed because they were purposely sited to delay their flowering, and this year it worked. The freeze caught most of the saucer magnolias in full bloom and they suddenly went from magnificent flowering displays to toast.  Sudden heat causes plant to flower quickly and fade just as quickly. TPP has also begun replanting the boundary garden where a huge limb from their tulip tree broke during an ice storm and squashed three conifers like bugs; they did not survive. The 'Techny' arbor vitaes will be replaced, but not the limber pine. A new 'black tulp' magnolia has been planted too. TPP also got to replace his Japanese umbrella pine (Scaidopitys), but you cannot replace 6 years of growth.  
New trees and shrubs means digging holes; you have no idea how many muscle groups get a workout digging holes, so again stop by, a stake marks the spot for the next hole twice the diameter of the root ball please. Get your back into it! This is for your own good! In another exercise challenge, yesterday TPP rebuilt a pedestal for a objet d'art out of large 
pavers, a non-leaning pedestal, and this AM his right hand is feeling the effects of that exercise as he types this blog. Stop on by, he'll show you which keys to hit.