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.

Monday morning random bits

FIELD WORK - There's a full schedule of field work this week to harvest biomass from our permanent research plots. At least the weather looks good all week, and although rain is needed, now hope it waits until the "harvest" is in. Biggest problem is a sore back; got to find some of those young student backs to do the heavy bending.
FIRST FROST - Came close to having our first frosts Friday & Saturday nights, but not quite cold enough to really frost things. Very light frost on 2nd night close to the ground so late pole beans survived.
CUCUMBERS IN OCTOBER - TPP picked a cucumber on the 18th of October!  Never, ever had them so late in the year and the reason is that the vines always die of a bacterial blight much earlier in the year. The blight is vectored by cucumber beetles so once they show up your vines days are pretty much numbered. Insect covers help, but when flowering starts you have to let pollinators in. So what happened to the beetles this year? Similarly the Japanese beetles were a near no show and June "bugs" were also near no-shows. And cicadas were not plentiful either. Was all the rain early in the season to blame either by drowning pupae or assisting fungi like milky spore? 
BEST NEW RECIPE - Apple, avocado, blue cheese, & walnut salad! 
CANNA RHIZOMES - The Phactors dug out a bed of landscape cannas, tall ones with purple foliage. Too bad these are not edible plants because the crop of rhizomes they produce is amazing. Oh, wait, maybe they are edible.  Who knew?
TRAVEL PLANS - Got our travel plans today for a rainforest field trip to Costa Rica. TPP used to do this every year with a class of students in tow. Amazing how much less stressful it is when the students become someone else's responsibility. Hope the el Niño weather does not result in a real wet field trip although having some rain is basically a given. Record for one 9 day field trip was over 400 mm.
FACULTY MEETING TO DISCUSS EVALUATION DOCUMENTS - Faculty meetings of any type are bad, but when the faculty are discussing evaluation it becomes especially dreadful. TPP stopped reading his yearly evaluations long before his retirement and became a much happier person especially when the money involved was too little to really matter. This is not recommended behavior for my younger colleagues. 

And one final plant flowers- monk's hood

TPP has blogged about monk's hood before (a Friday fabulous flower).  Yesterday was officially the first day of flowering - October 20th, and that's 6 days earlier than in 2012!  These are a great plant for the patient if you have a nice quiet shady spot.  Another new happening this year; something ate one of our plants and usually nothing touches them because they are really toxic. But this year bun-buns ate a lot of things they never touched before none of which made us very happy.  Tonight may be our first frost, but probably not for our garden.  It has to frost hard before our little heat island gets frost.  Nonetheless yesterday was spent doing some garden cleanup and pickup. Except for tomatoes this year's kitchen garden was pretty good.  Still have some mesclun, lettuce, and bok choi, but it takes a pretty hard freeze to damage these.  Fall color remains reluctant, but cool nights just began a week ago; drought will really reduce the sugar maple display this year. 

Crispy, a close call

It was a bit crispy last night with a low of 33 F, 1 degree above freezing and a frost for all the literate people out there who the C scale.  This is a little bit early for a frost, but not much.  The close call was that TPP forgot that he needed basil for a salmon marinade this morning, and there are very few plants that are more sensitive to frost than basil.  So our dinner party dodged a culinary bullet.  A bit of bok choi and lettuce are all that remain in the garden with any potential, and they are comfy in their cold frame.  The sugar maples are beginning to show some color and the sassafras in the far back corner of the estate is already a nice orange-yellow.  A newly planted tupelo is beginning to show promise for being a colorful fall plant.  Six foot tall elephant ear and cannas still stand tall and will until we get a real hard frost, or until the Phactors get impatient and just decide to dig them anyways.  TPP is not real keen on more digging.  Our field work has already involved way too much digging to suit my aching hip.  So now it's time to swing through a farmer's market, pick up a couple of new shrubs, and finish up preparations for the dinner party which includes a chocolate cranberry tart.

Jack Frost threatens

Frosts in April are no surprise, and very hard frosts can occur as late as the middle of the month, and five years ago, after a warmish March, such a frost (mid-20s F) damaged lots of plants that sprouted growth too early, but not near as early as this year.  As another nasty imported Canadian front pushes down out of the northwest, tonight treatens to have a frost, but probably not a very hard one. Living in the city center, a heat island, provides a 2-3 degree buffer.  But still the Phactor worries because his Magnolia tripetala has flower buds, a new addition to my collection that is just 4-5 years old.  It will really be annoying if those buds get damaged, and even more annoying if such plants get frozen back.  In the perennial bed, a Vitex gives evidence to the mildness of the winter.  Vitex was formerly a verb, an aromatic somewhat woody plant that until this year was only hardy basally with good mulching so each year new growth  sprouted up from the base.  This year it did not die back at all, and has sprouted out acting like a hardy shrub.  A frost may well damage plants like this severely, although no more than most winters.  Not much to do but wait and see.  So you'll either be treated to a blog about a new Magnolia in flower or more ranting about weather ruining my spring.  Stay tuned.