Wanting warmth

March came in like a Lion with cool, blustery conditions and today I'm seeing scattered snowflakes. Brrr. A year ago it was nice, sunny, and warm. Most of us long for that weather today....

But alas, don't be in such a rush. Your plants aren't ready for warmth this early. The earth has a funny way of throwing cold stretches of weather in April and sometimes even in May (remember Mother's Day 2010?). Too much warmth this early starts the seasonal growth process for plants and then we get those cold, even frosty conditions and your new flower buds and leaves get 'zorched' and you are left with dead leaves and buds! Not good.

So, although the Robin's are singing (well not today, but i heard them last week) and the Geese are on the move, be patient on the desire for Spring. Your plants actually welcome this cool stretch of weather. Enjoy The Snowdrops and early Squills and Crocuses that are out...they can handle this cold. A blooming Forsythia or Crabapple can't.

Enjoy a couple pictures of the Greenhouses. Maybe this will help warm your heart today.

Random Thought - Plants & Life

So this morning is the 20th anniversary of waking up to a brutal icestorm in the Rochester area. Talk to anyone who went through it and it was an adventure to say the least. Well 20 years later I'm watching the sun rise from a hospital room of a dear person to me. A Hospice room to be exact.

Outside the window is a wonderfully branched Honeylocust tree. Likely the 'Skyline' or 'Halka' variety. What struck me is that this tree has no leaves, yet it is completely beautiful in its dormancy. Upright and uniform branching, it is strikingly elegant. I'm wondering how old is tree actually and what state of life is it in? And even if the tree, in its majesty, is completely healthy, its a living organism. And it could be riddled with a borer or virus and be in complete decline and failure in 2 years.

A family friend brought a bouquet of artifical flowers consisting of Easter Lilies and Double Peonies. The colors are so vivid and real, that someone immediately went over to take a smell. Was a good laugh for all. My point? That person went to smell the flowers....she didn't pre-judge them because they looked too pretty to be true, she didn't just assume they would have a simple fragrance like any other pretty flower would, and she didn't pre-judge the flower as being like something from her past.....It was new and was given a new chance. And even though the fragrance wasn't what was anticipated, the flower had a beauty that known of us in the room really saw until it was here for a bit.

What? Well, it wasn't the true flower expected and hoped for, but after watching it for a few days, its new qualities were true in color and vividness. Life is that way too. For people, we judge that someone can not change after something has happened to hurt us and change our opinion about them. Maybe our hurt won't let us grow. But life of everything ebbs and flows. That Honeylocust tree had some good growing years and had some not so good ones too. Our vegetable gardens have good years and bad years. Our landscape plants don't always perform up to what we expect, but....we love them, nurture their inequities, and work with bringing them back to the glory they once were.

Your new season of flowers and vegetables is set to start, and even with a possible bad year last year or in the past, you're going to try again. And hope to not be disappointed.

Life...its hard...its not always fair. Our life is like one large garden. As I watch the final leaves fall from a close person in her Autumn of Life, don' be so anxious to dig up your life like a garden and throw it away to start over. There just might be a new color in that flower that hasn't performed well in the past.