Monday, Monday

It would have to be a Monday.  It snowed last night about an inch; not enough to bury or hide the blue lawn completely.  And of course it's still cold.  The whole thing is pretty depressing.  Still have lots of leaves to remove from beds and the bases of shrubs and perennials, but don't want to uncover the new shoots too soon.  The delayed spring results in forced inactivity, and that is also sort of depressing.  A series of emails about kapok reminded TPP of the tropics, and how different it is in tropical places & a certain longing for the tropics looms up, and you want to go.  Fortunately this snow is almost gone already, and a 70 high is predicted in just a few days.  Or is it just a setup for another weather disappointment?   No choice but to wait & see.  

Forcing taxonomy

Things are slowly greening up, but my taxonomy class needs more flowering specimens.  So TPP will have to resort to more forcing, that is, bringing nearly in flower specimens into the glasshouse to hurry them along.  And no, not the other kind of forcing where as a colleague of mine used to say, "I'll teach them (fill-in-the-blank) even if I have to tear their heads off and pour it in."  Actually with new learning technologies, microchips can be implanted thus eliminating the necessity of re-attaching the heads. Has anyone ever forced fragrant sumac into flower? No? And who would do so?  Well, we'll see how that goes.  Spicebush looks very close so forcing should work.  Elms are cooperating, but none are close by. Hepatica in my gardens is showing flower buds, but out in nature it'll still be one or two weeks from flowering. Hellebore flowers are opening so that will help. An example of TPP's desperation is checking out dandelions and mustardy weeds on the south sides of buildings to see how the buds are developing. Come on!  Come on! Imagine the thrill to find a star magnolia growing in a protected courtyard that is almost in flower! 

Waiting for signs of spring

Officially the 2013-2014 winter has been a long, cold, and snowy, and today is no exception.  It's a bitterly cold day following another below zero Fahrenheit over night low. Just to make himself feel better TPP checked his garden flowering log data.  His witch-hazel has bloomed between Feb 18 and March 3d over the past 4 years. This Sunday another multiple inch snowfall is predicted, so it looks like a late spring for certain. The brief partial melt has begun to reveal the extent of the bunny damage, and it's quite shocking. Every bit of pine foliage within their reach has been nibbled away!  Never before have they nibbled on my pines!  A dwarf spreading Scotch pine has really been denuded and we can hope it recovers from such a severe and haphazard pruning. And even worse, TPP needs flowering to commence for his taxonomy class.

Have data, need analysis

Our garden event data shows that virtually everything is happening 10 to 16 days later than last year. But the difference is not universal, so it will take some time to actually compare the two records. Some plants have for years flowered on or about a particular date, and their tardiness suggests things are late this year. Slowly things are beginning to catch up. Local area farmers are way behind in planting schedules according to the news and our prairie is late too, and that's good because the eradication treatment must get finished this week. So much fun, down on your hands and knees weeding a prairie.