Bleak and cold

TPP is home after a bit more than 24 hrs of travel.  Hard to believe how bleak and cold the upper Midwest can be especially having left a fairly lush tropical place.  The air is so dry.  The kitty girls are certainly glad the Phactors are home; it will take them awhile to get less clingy.  Several little things need attention, that's entropy for you.  Fortunately the polar vortex came and went while we were enjoying much warmer weather in Maui and Kauai. Arriving home last evening the temperature was about 30F, but it was very damp, and being most inappropriately dressed it seemed much colder.  Snuggling cats were determined to keep us close and warm.  The ultimate price of the extreme cold weather will await an evaluation of the damage come spring.  TPP already has a long list of plants that might be rather susceptible to such cold and no one else is at fault for having planted some not quite cold hardy in zone 5 plants. It has been nearly 40 years since the area has experienced near, or beyond, rock bottom zone 5 temps (around -20 F).  This is an interesting temperature barrier for freeze avoiding plants. TPP has blogged about this several times.  

Snow? Snow! Jon Snow.

Snow is coming everyone says. But it's 40 degrees outside and spring bulbs are poking up everywhere and a bearpaw hellebore is almost in flower. Jon Snow is just a cheap click bait trick that momentarily seemed funny. Although TPP keeps waiting for a GnOPe candidate to propose a great wall to keep whatever Canada has that's dangerous in the Great White North. This might include winter weather, but the approaching front is coming on a diagonal from the southwest, which is where our heavy snows come, but only in a narrow band. Presently some snow would be welcome but not because soil moisture is low but to protect some not well acclimated plants from a sudden cold snap. December was like November, now January is like December and if February turns out to be like March then winter is really getting short.  Maybe that zone 6 plant isn't such a waste of money?  Heck, the grass is still green as well as the Corydalis lutea, a plant that will be one of the 1st to flower in the spring and one of the last to stop in the fall (if we have one). For a plant that seeds itself in everywhere, it's still worth planting in tough places. It's easy to get rid of where unwanted. Notice that no matter what the topic it quickly turns to spring. Last TPP has read the books, so in a manner of speaking he knows about Jon Snow, a favorite character, but the idea that the series has moved beyond the author is a really strange adaptation of rather epic books. Unless (my theory) the author has actually been unable to figure out the ending of his own story so that the subsequent volumes will be books adapted from the TV show. Strangely TPP has to run an errand before a winter storm starts to get a mango, and the nearest ones are probably in southern Florida.  See you around, winter.

Seed catalogs - Saviours of winter

Each year the seed catalogs start arriving, usually just after New Year's Day, but this year the Phactors got 4 between Christmas and New Year's Day. More will come.   A serious plant habit needs feeding. Why one local nursery used to invite us to a customer appreciation cocktail party every year! Nothing is better than looking at all the promissory pictures to get us through the winter months. You make lists suggesting where things will be planted and you hope for the best in terms of the weather so that you get the most out of your seed and plant investment. New introductions are always interesting and sometimes new varieties solve former problems, but not always. A dwarf, heat/bolt resistant romaine lettuce looks real interesting. As well as a new baby bok choi ready in 30-40 days from sowing! Just add water!  Our perennial beds have a couple of trouble spots where things just don't grow well for reasons not understood, so you keep trying to find a plant to fill in the area. Sometimes the temptation to cheat is just a bit too strong and a zone 6 plant is given a try.  And you may be OK for several years until a Saskatchewan clipper comes into town and you learn that plant distributions are based on the extremes not the means. Already the list is growing since part of the back back lawn is being converted into a woodland/shade garden, and it's a pretty big area that will take a lot of filling. It could be a new species of Epimedium (how many are in the trade now?), or a new big Hosta (still waiting for 'Jurassic Park' to live up to its name).  That's thing, these catalogs are the stuff dreams are made of, but no matter what you have something to look forward to get you through the bleakness of winter.  And then there are all the online places too. 

Wind chill and plant cold hardiness

A reader asks an interesting question.  How does wind chill affect plants?  If a plant is cold hardy to say 10 F [22 degrees F below freezing for those of you who use rational C units], and the wind chill is -20 degrees, will the additional cold hurt or kill my plant?  OK, the short answer, no. The wind chill doesn't affect plants, only the absolute temperature. The wind chill factor is how much colder the temperature seems to us warm-blooded animals because of the wind, but it is still the same temperature.  Remember the wind chill factor is the number of degrees that is subtracted from the actual temperature; it is often reported so that you don't know if it is the apparent temperature that is -20 degrees or if you must subtract 20 degrees from the actual temperature.  But to the plant it is simply 10 F; not being warm-blooded plants don't get colder because of the wind.  Here's a couple of refreshers on cold hardiness from TPP's archives:
Why don't trees freeze? and It's the extremes. This winter, '14-'15, with the jet stream positioned where it is, our snow is coming from fronts moving up from the south west, and then the cold air pushes back south and a blast of frigid air follows.  So this winter has seen several nights where the temperature has reached 32-39 degrees F below freezing. Zone 5 plants will be fine, but any plant not fully hardy in that zone may get damaged or killed. So TPP has a bad feeling about the Helianthemum replacements. They were under a good snow cover for the first couple of cold blasts, but the last blast caught them bare, naked of snow. Ah, well. What kind of gardener are you if you don't push the envelope a little says the man with an Ashe Magnolia to plant come spring. 

Wintery weather

A light dusting of snow and the gathering dusk has produced a rather cold-looking landscape study in black and white. After the lushness of the tropical rain forest this stark coldness is particularly hard to deal with.  TPP has spent much of the day cooking, preparations for some Tico food for his students' "picture party" to cap off the semester in a few days and some curried meatballs for din-dins today.  Corms and rhizomes drying and curing in the basement were packed into some cocoa shells and stored in a cool spot. For some reason, TPP has had a very difficult time reconnecting to the calendar and upcoming events.  Mrs. Phactor has taken to giving me a daily briefing, to-do lists, and then a quiz. When given direct orders, he's doing OK.  Will you make me a New York cocktail, please?  Yes, my dear.  What a good choice.  First, take 2 oz of bourbon, 1 oz lemon juice, and 1/2 oz simple syrup and shake with ice.  Then pour on the rocks.  Then float an oz of dry red wine on the top.  It's super nice looking and pretty simple to make. As you drink the mixing changes the taste. Will you please feed the kitty-girls?  Yes, my dear. Kibble equals happiness.  If TPP stays helpful, he may not get put out in such nasty weather. 

First day of winter

Today is unofficially the first day of winter as determined by yours truly.  Today feels genuinely cold, and is the coldest day we've had so far.  A few flurries are in the air as if to emphasize the obvious.  Data published two days ago in the Chi-town Tribune (I'd present the chart, but it's behind a pay wall even for us hard copy subscribers, and it'll be a very cold day in Chi-town when TPP pays for access twice!) shows that if Chi-twon goes snowless today, it'll set a new record of 281 days between measurable snowfalls (about 1/10th of an inch, which is a strange hybrid measurement between the 8ths, 16ths, and 32nds of an inch and a decimal inch).  The 18 year old record was 280 days between the last snow fall of one winter season and the first snowfall of the next winter.  The shortest time was over 100 days less, only 173 days (!), and that was back quite a few years (forgot the year).  Snow here will not be measurable unless things really pick up later, so we'll see what happens in Chi-town some 100+ miles to the north.  There's a significant difference in weather across this distance, in part due to the proximity of the Great Lakes.  Such weather suggests a warming and drying trend as most of the most snowless years have been in the last 20 years.  People tend to forget about snow as part of the year's precipitation, but it really does count.  When the Phactor moved to this area 35 years ago, it was after spending 8 years another zone or two south, and the return to snowy winters was like a minor league return to the snow belt of my youth in upstate NY.  Nothing tops the snowfalls there.  But after the first few years, the winters just went brown.  This area has only 10-30 days of continuous snow cover on average, and snow cover surviving 40 days indicate a cold, snowy winter. Where TPP grew up the average was 3 times that long.  Chances of a white Christmas seem slight.  Chances the Phactors will get their X-country skis out seem very slight.  The unpredictable storms that really generate snow come from southwest of us along narrow diagonal tracks, and you only have to be 50 miles out of the track either way to almost escape completely, so you never really know. 

Distant Memories - Six Months Ago

Think about it. Six months ago it was February 3d, and this photo was taken out of our front door. July has a way of making you forget about February. Suppose if we didn't we'd move to a more reasonable climate. So having forgotten the snow, the Phactor did typical enough summer things. A relatively new to this area invasive species, the Japanese beetle, has emerged, maybe not in as many numbers as two years ago, so the dwarf apple trees were netted up, and while at it so were the cucumbers. Around here just about the time your cucumbers begin bearing fruit, cucumber beetles show up, and while not particularly destructive themselves, they vector a bacterial wilt that kills your cucumber vines prematurely. Since they were planted late to begin with, keeping the cucumber vines out of the reach of beetles until they begin flowering, but then because pollination is needed, you have to provide insect access unless you like hand-pollinating lots of flowers, which in a garden on our scale is feasible. The herb garden, some of the more recently planted trees and shrubs, and the Japanese parasol pine (Scaidopitys) all got watered because they handle these hot days best when well watered. Having gotten through the "to do" list for the day, it's time for a margarita.

Lincolnland Tries to Teach Tropical Travelers a Lesson

A temperature of around -6 C and snow flurries is no way to greet tropical travelers who not only aren't used to it, they aren't dressed for it, and although their parents would be appalled at their lack of fore thought, even the Phactor felt sorry for students caught only in t-shirts. So the return from the tropics to the seasonal weather of Lincolnland was every bit as shocking as expected; it was as if our homeland were trying to teach us a lesson, but if it was, the lesson may have had the opposite effect. As observed by my sage senior colleague, "I don't have any damned classes to teach; why the hell didn't I stay in Costa Rica when I had the chance?" Good point that. And no question about it, if the state were not paying my salary, chances are the Phactor would be spending very little time there too. So let me close by assuring my employer and the citizens of Lincolnland that the Phactor returned with as many students as he took, and as a result a few of them may have some appreciation of the splendor of perfectly fried platanos and freshly picked ripe pineapple, the remarkable diversity of rain forests, the tenacity of ants, and the tropical life.

Mammal prognostication gives me paws

Ground hog day is a very funny movie, but in general mammal weather prognosticators do little more to inspire confidence than wooly worms or farmers' almanacs. Which is to say they don't know squat.

First of all what self-respecting mammal comes out of hibernation in early February? That would only happen in places where it doesn't matter whether winter lasts another month and a half or not. Ground hogs certainly don't make February appearances in Minnesota or Maine, and who cares about winter at all in southern Georgia?

As I listened to the radio report from Pennsylvania, it occurred to me that the continuation of winter had nothing whatever to do with shadow-seeing rodents. What makes anyone think a ground hog is afraid of his own shadow? Now maybe the shadow of a golden eagle sweeping by would frighten a golden marmot back into their burrow, but they live so far up in the mountains that early summer has already come to the flat lands. Pity that our local birds of prey are not mighty enough to cast fear into the hearts of ground hogs. It would be quite pleasing if the natural order of things included a predator capable of removing, one by one, the serial occupants of the burrow under my garden shed.

Clearly the answer is not associated with such garden destroying chow hounds.

There on the counter in front of me was the real reason for the continuation of winter. That roll of paper towels is decorated with snow flakes and snowmen, and winter isn't going to end until that great big roll is used up and replaced with towels decorated with little flowers. I am certain that is true. Hear me now and believe me later, the last paper towel will be torn off that roll and just like that the witch hazels will flower. Of course, they don't always wait for the end of winter either.