poinsettias at Wallace's Garden Center
Here in the darkest depths of winter there is reason for the gardener to celebrate: from now on every day will have just a bit more daylight. Incremental, yes, but inexorable. Spring is coming!
Waiting for the return of light is a good time to spend in rest and renewal and preparation. There’s a steady stream of seed catalogs to fuel the imagination and these cold, snowy days are the perfect excuse to curl up in a comfy chair under a blanket.
In the spirit of rest and renewal, Notes from a Small Garden is going to take a winter break. Look for new posts again in mid-March about the same time as the return of spring. Until then, wishing you a wonderful Holiday and a happy, healthy New Year!
1. 
At the last minute the storm veered slightly west and north from it’s expected path, cutting our snow total to “only” 9.8 inches (the prediction was for 8-12 inches) Instead we got freezing rain which is usually much worse than snow; fortunately, it was just warm enough that it didn’t coat power lines or tree branches and there were relatively few power outages.
However, what makes a storm a blizzard has less to do with snow totals (although that’s important) and much more to do with high winds and freezing temps which is what came Wednesday night into Thursday. This is when snow is a very good thing in the gardener’s estimation – a blanket of snow is excellent insulation and perennials hardy to this area should be safe and snug.
Thursday dawned brilliantly sunny – and frigid. The temperature at 7am was minus 4 degrees; by 3pm we were up to a balmy 11 degrees. However, we fared better than many in the Midwest – Des Moines had 16 inches of snow and I-80, the main interstate across the state was closed for several hours. Madison, Wisconsin where my friend Carol lives received 19 inches and even the University there closed.
If you were warmly dressed (or better yet, sitting inside with a nice hot toddy), Thursday was a beautiful day with gorgeous blue skies and fresh white snow outlining the trees and softening the landscape.
The flowerbeds have been cut back, bulbs have been tucked into the ground, leaves have been raked (well, most of them) – it’s time to bring another gardening season to a close. Thanksgiving makes an excellent bookend for this (the opening being March 21, the first day of spring) in my Zone 5 garden especially since it’s a holiday of tradition, of gratitude for the harvest, of family and friends. I have been blessed in all of these – tradition of lessons about the land and plants that I learned from my parents and grandparents, a garden year filled with beautiful flowers and food to eat, and the love and support of friends and family. Of course, the next garden season is already underway – the spring seed catalogs began arriving last week!
One of those fall garden chores is planting bulbs for spring bloom. Every year it’s the same: in the fall I wish I’d bought fewer and in the spring I wish I’d planted more. Planting bulbs is a leap of faith, a tribute to the optimism of gardeners. That those bulbs, plain and knobby, tan and brown with flaking paper skins will one day turn into all the glorious colors of spring after spending months in the icy grip of winter – it’s a miracle that never ceases to amaze and delight. But it requires a payment – chilled hands and an aching back, creaky knees and sore muscles. Good thing we have that long winter’s nap to recover!
Garden clean-up has begun in earnest – cold weather is rapidly approaching and it’s time to tuck in the flower beds for a long winter nap. It’s a necessary and important part of the garden cycle, and it has it’s own rewards – but it’s also a lot of work. I try to spread it out over several weeks, but sometimes the weather and my work schedule make it impossible to do anything other than leap at any small window of opportunity and get as much done as quickly as possible.
Unfortunately, this is what has happened this year. We’re experiencing a wet, chilly autumn which is making it especially difficult to get bulbs planted (local farmers are in dire straights) Inevitably, dry weather has seen me at work. I managed to get most of the cutting garden tulips planted but only by covering the bed with a tarp in an attempt to keep most of the 1 inch-plus rainfall that we had last week out of the bed. I still have some daffodils and more tulips to plant; I’m trying to stay calm about this – you can plant bulbs until the ground freezes (although daffodils prefer to get in the ground earlier if possible), but it has been frustrating. I guess if they don’t get planted in the garden, I’ll pot them up and force them for late winter bloom.
