I was in Virginia and Cancun, Mexico for a two week vacation and missed 80+ degree weather and snow as well. My weather station kept me up-to-date. I came home to find all sorts of new blooms and buds that didn’t look bad for all they’d been through! Here’s what’s newly blooming:
- tulips
- forget-me-nots
- sour cherry tree
- ornamental strawberries (lipstick)
- lamium
- wild ginger
- English daisy
- bog rosemary
- dicentra (bleeding hearts) in pink and white
- fritillaria
- Leopard’s Bane
- Foam Flower
- Pulminaria
Also, the past two days since I have been home I have been busy getting a couple of roots and tubers in the ground that I ordered and had arrived while I was out of town. I planted the following:
- Dahlia- Mary Evaline
- CURCUMA ALISMATIFOLIA THAI SUPREME
- BRODIAEA LAXA ROYAL BLUE
- GENTIAN MARSHA
- ARISARUM PROBOSCIDEUM (THE MOUSE PLANT)
- ASTRANTIA MAJOR MOULIN ROUGE
- DAHLIA BLUE BELL
- ASTRANTIA RUBY WEDDING
- BUTTERFLY PLANT A. INCARNATA
- BUTTERFLY PLANT A. INCARNATA ICE BALLET
- BUTTERFLY PLANT A. TUBEROSA
More heavy wet snow greeted me again this morning when I looked out the window. Just an inch or so. There has been more winter weather this past week than the rest of winter combined. Just heard on the news this evening that the tulip farms in Skagit valley will be running a little behind with their blooms this year. View the bloom map for updates.
I finally cut my burgundy hyacinths and put them in a vase. They didn’t bounce back from the wet, heavy snow and are now adorning my bedroom dresser instead.
I also re-located my outdoor thermometer and installed a radiation shield for more accurate readings. I started working on relocating my rain gauge, but the hail got too much for me so I will wait for a drier day.
Otherwise, things are looking good. I am so excited for all the tulips to bloom which hopefully isn’t too far away!
Oh, I almost forgot, my first camellia of the season started blooming today. Bright red and beautiful! I’ll try to snap a picture.
1:20 pm All the snow from the day before melted, but by 8 am this morning, it had started to snow again and is still snowing. It’s coming down hard but is not accumulating much because according to my weather station, it’s a couple degrees above freezing at 35.6 degrees F. I’ll keep you posted.
As for the heavy wet snow from the day before, most of my plants pretty much did bounce back upright. The narcissus are still upright and have wisely kept their buds closed up tight. No garden damage to report. Hopefully it will stay this way. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the temperature holds above freezing because just recently I planted all my dahlia tubers, and they do not like to freeze. At least they hadn’t sprouted.
5 pm The snow has stopped and the temp. is going up. Yeay!
The park in front of my home this morning at 8 am
7:40 am Well, thank goodness I decided to go outside last night at 11pm (very peaceful and I enjoyed every minute of the half hour I was out there) to shake the snow off the trees and shrubs because it is still snowing! I’ll take a measurement soon. Most trees look okay except for one quaking aspen. Since it’s a high elevation tree and should be used to this type of thing, I hope it “bounces” back soon. Otherwise, I can tell already that I’m going to have to truss up my 6, now scraggly, Italian cypress after this little storm. They are still small, just 2-3 feet, so this shouldn’t be too difficult other than being on a 40 degree slope that is. More later I am sure.
1:30 pm My measurement this morning was a grand total of 3 inches of snow. It stopped snowing around 8 am.
