It's not nice to tempt Mother Nature when she's in a bad mood already

Just an hour ago, TPP tempted fate and the fickle finger of Mother Nature delivered.  The pixels on TPP's last blog were hardly dry when a largish limb split from the neighbor's big Liriodendron (tulip tree) and narrowly missed squashing their garage like a bug. As it is the damage is minimal but no one is going anywhere any time too soon. This is a job well beyond TPP's abilities with a chair saw although in younger and more foolish days he has handled an even bigger job, but then it was his own garage on the line, and it was only a weekender cabin. Of course a couple of nice Thuja plicata's are under that limb and the limber pine may have taken a beating. Not to mention his tiny Sinocalycanthus is where it can get trampled during the clean up.  Of course, this kind of weather will have every qualified arborist in the area working overtime for a week or two.

Mid-winter garden status report

So far the winter of 2014-2015 has been fairly mild.  Some unseasonal cold during the late fall to winter transition. Some snow, but nothing unusual. A night or two of deep cold, around 0 F, but not prolonged or severe cold. And now following some a couple of modest snow events, a mid-winter thaw. This provided an opportunity to have a look around at the gardens, an inspection of sorts. There be lots of limbs and twigs to pick up, the result of having had a couple of fairly wet, heavy snows. It'll take a couple of hours to gather all that dead wood, but fortunately nothing got smashed in the process. The Rhododendron-hating oak missed; probably didn't factor the wind correctly. Evergreens in general look OK including a new Cephalotaxus, plum yew. Nothing looks dry or brown, or both. Hard to tell if a Helleborus foetidus is going to flower or not, even zero degrees, which is way below freezing in F, is pretty cold for it. No obvious bunny damage although a couple of bunny barriers has to be repaired. Bunny population is not quite so high as last year, but as soon as it gets dark they appear and will visit the area around our bird/squirrel feeders to see if they find any food. Evidence indicates that the Cooper's hawks have been foraging OK and that the Phactors have a couple less cardinals than they used to have. Must be their protective coloration. Tiny sprouts can be seen where the Scilla is poking up promising a blue lawn (here and here) will follow. A few other early spring bulbs are also showing up, and yes, those have been nibbled. Bunnies got to eat. So the general status report is good for this time of year. Hard to know as variable as the weather has been what the next 4-5 weeks will be like. But what the heck, TPP planted some parsley seed in some Jiffy-7s just to get things going.