Home Garden Companion

Ilona's Garden Journal




cold weather

My Mind’s In A Vortex or I can’t stop thinking about the weather

by

March Snow 2014, the ragged edges of winter

It seems to be the only thing that I center on anymore, when my mind turns to gardening. The Weather. There were residual bits of snow scattered around the yard today, and more ice and snow predicted for the next couple days. Lots of people talk about how tired they are of winter and this weather… I guess I am either more philosophical about it or just old, but the weather doesn’t bother me.

Not until I think about gardening.

I just stop thinking about it, because it is too cold and the ground is frozen. Perhaps that is where the saying “it just stops me cold” came from? If not, a good use of the phrase. That is what thermometer readings of single digits and below do: they stop my ideas of gardening…cold.

Maybe it is from the the years of observing the signs of the weather, or it might have something to do with raising ten children, but I think in terms of seasons. I want to live in the present season of what life has to offer… not looking for summer blooms in March, or a child’s walking when they have not yet crawled.

I wasn’t always this way. No, I can remember habitually wanting to hurry on to the next thing.

I often have less of something because of this perspective, but I enjoy it more. It’s a tradeoff. Yet, I found little answer to the question “What is the hurry for?”

Now, as protracted as this winter has been, as harsh and cold, and unforgiving, I am waiting it out; and do like seeing the snow, since fresh snowfall never ceases to be pretty in my eyes, there’s a wonder to it.

There is something of a negative to this patience for spring’s arrival, though. As happy as I might be that the stink bug population is expected to have been decimated, I am concerned that some of my plants will not have survived such frigid temperatures. I don’t wish to face the exposed reality if these fears are well founded. Do you ever dread such losses?

What Do I Fear Losing?

Lavender, Did it make it through this winter?
  • The Lavender Walk has suffered before, and that is my greatest concern. Lavender is marginally hardy in my garden winters, and while the plants are not difficult or especially expensive to replace, they do take a year just to grow into the size that makes a “hedge”.
  • What is left of my roses might be lost. I haven’t covered them for years, but this year I may rue the fact.
  • The new perennials, which hadn’t yet rooted in sufficiently or were not hardy enough for the effects of the polar vortex.
From very cold winters frost cracking can appear on the cherry trees.
With snow cover and long cold winter season, rodents and deer can do damage, unseen. under cover of snow or night I had already noticed a rabbit very busy eating in my garden last month- the impertinent and bold critter! I might be sorry I left him uninterrupted when I check that area this spring.
The lavender was replanted before.

Two habits from recent years seem worth repeating in the coming season: planting colorful containers, and concentrating on a few garden beds.

Our gardening changes with the turn our lives take. Mine, as I’ve gotten older has taken me away from the garden. It must now be smaller and easier to care for, it must not get over ambitious in the inflated ego of spring. Otherwise I am left with overwhelming troops of weeds, and burdensome tasks.

Not to be overly dramatic about it, but some broken dreams get thrown in there if I thought I would plant the perennial borders of my past along with a riot of annuals, and a burgeoning vegetable patch.

In every garden, the keeper of it must decide what it means to them, what is important and what isn’t. It is a constant culling of priorities as well as planting of new ones. If we work to exhaustion, it ought to be a happy exhaustion, because we loved doing it.

The letting go ought to be just as deliberate, and happy. Is this what a contentment consists of? I feel like it is. Making peace with oneself, the weather, and what one can do. For me, that is one of the greatest lessons of my garden.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ // ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Visit Ilona’s Garden Journal on facebook: Click here
© 2013 written for Ilona’s Garden Journal by Ilona E. An excellent blog.

The Big Chill: It was a Late Spring

by

 

Wall flowers from flower mix planted last year

As I write this I still have heat on, a fire in the woodstove, although we are promised a summer-like, near-eighty degree temperature today. I covered my basil and the container plantings the last couple days against the frost warnings. Even for Ohio, this fluctuation in temperature is a little untoward.

I went to a plant sale last weekend that turned out to be quite disappointing for me. I overpaid for two weak, tiny pepper plants and didn’t get any of the heritage/heirloom tomatoes I was hoping for; however, my husband and I went ahead and visited the Whetstone Park of Roses to see what was happening there.

Not many of the roses were blooming. Of the old roses, only an early yellow rose had its blooms strewn across its branches like a strand of yellow cream pearls. But the stroll through the garden was informative and lovely in other ways.

Informative Truths

Gardens change. That seems to be the one truth about them over all the world, the one unchanging thing about a garden is that it will change. It is probably true about every other thing on earth, too, but it is most noticeable in gardens and in children, come to think of it. We see our mortality in them. But not just that, or it would be depressing instead of invigorating.

We are infused with hope and optimism when seeing children change and grow, as well as discover the bright and sunny side of life if we poke through a garden, even one grown seedy and weedy with neglect. In the Park of Roses, the garden is kept up and the changes are geared towards the public, improved for weddings and concerts, reworked and weeded for the many visitors that promenade through its walks.

This Season

In the Whetstone garden, a tree I remembered from the time I was a child, and later when my children explored its branches with curiosity, was cut to the ground. It was a very large contorted filbert sort of tree, not the size of the Harry Lauder hazels in my own garden. I now wish I had taken a photograph of that tree on one of my many visits to the park.

Some sad assortment of new things were planted around its memorial ground level trunk. I don’t know the story on its demise.  Perhaps caused by a variation of some of the same terrible trunk damage I saw on a very mature copper beech tree elsewhere in the Rose Garden. Still standing, but the tree’s days are marked in its large branch splitting off and unsupported, and the bark damage around the base.

I don’t blame the caretakers of the park, because all too often blind vandals desecrate trees and other things which they neither understand nor value. Or it could be rampant deer, or rabbits who took a winter meal under cover of snow. Or just the vagaries of nature. As observed… gardens change.

The Weather

 

Weeping Crabapple

I have been mildly irritated by how the weather has followed such uncharted ups and downs, but if a more reasoned state of mind is allowed its say, the crabapple tree bloom was spectacular. There were spring pictures of great beauty. The spring was different, but it wasn’t marred, just late and a bit strange.

It had its share of beauty, so far. I am not complaining.

Impressions

The scent of apple blossom, Carlesii viburnum, wallflowers, and L. fragrantissima converged into a delightful breeze-blown and spirit lifting invitation to truly breathe. I took great, gulping, greedy breathes and stayed out in the yard just to let the experience of the mixing perfumery of God fill my soul. I love times like that. I didn’t work on the weeds, I didn’t grab a camera, I took no thought of the computer or blogging. I just lived it, and wrote it in my mind’s notebook.

It makes me feel free to let go the need to document, or improve, or somehow prove I lived that moment.

Though here I am, telling it to you.

And I do have some pictures of the days around that time, so the balance of freedom lets something be created, something be left to share and to revisit when the ephemeral feelings fade and seem less real when more of life crowds in.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ // ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Visit Ilona’s Garden Journal on facebook: Click here
© 2013 written for Ilona’s Garden Journal by Ilona E. An excellent blog.

Chill in the Air

by

It has gotten quite cool all of a sudden here, the chill of fall has arrived, no mistaking. Last night there were areas in the 30’s. This is typical September weather. I can remember, as a girl, walking to school with my new sweater in the morning and feeling too warm for it walking home in the afternoon. Cool and crisp mornings followed by brightly blue and sunny days, September is always a pretty month in my mind.

I took note and determined that I will cover the tomatoes in hopes that I will get a decent crop once it warms up a bit. Fall time here usually warms up for most of October and you can usually get some last tomatoes, if you cover them at night. Tuck them in with a sheet to keep the frost out and get the last little bit of summer on the table.

This time of year always makes me feel wistful. Foggy mornings and misty evenings, interspersed with the clear afternoon light that seems too short… lovely days always seem too short. The butterflies dance obliviously around the autumn clematis, I wonder if they know their time is short, yet dance anyway? They love the sweet soapy and creamy colored froth of clematis blooms. This year the vine is so wild and unkempt that it seems to make the arbor groan under all the bloom, too bad there are no little children in the house, that inner sanctuary of the arbor would make a perfect hideaway. Did you ever do that as a child? I always did, and the great forsythia bushes of my home and that of a neighbor provided virtual tents where we played and hid and watched the adult world outside.

This is the time of year I used to ride my bike down to the river and find my favorite tree whose roots made the ideal seat for a bookworm like me. I’d spend a couple hours reading while the river meandered by just below, and the sunshine trickled in through the leaves on the high branches. Only certain trees have just the right seat formation and you are very lucky if you have found one, I think.

I never have time for such things now, and I live in bare farmland where there are few places to wander off to, few trees except for those on private properties where owners dislike uninvited visitors. Sometimes I wish I had a full grown woods, but then I wouldn’t know the far reaching fields that give the eye no barrier to flaming sunsets, and the mural of the western skies. Each thing has the beauty of its own, which it alone can claim. The trouble is we are greedy for all the kinds of beauty, sometimes. I would have the ocean, the mountains, the plain, and the woods…. I would have it all if I could. It is all so very beautiful.

Technorati Tags: ,

Blogroll Me!

The February Melt

by

Rain is melting down all the snow cover. It is the typical January thaw -just a bit late. I heard the ground hog saw his shadow, so this year I can check the accuracy of the old saw. We should have the longer winter season.

Now that Bill Murray made the Ground Hog Day movie… that is what I always think about when someone mentions the February 2nd designation. I think I’ve seen the movie one too many times…. instead of the more elegant term “deja vue” …… we say “Ground Hog Day” around here. Now there is culture deterioration. And the heretical idea that the French might be right about something.

I don’t like going out side in this weather. Maybe I am picky about winter weather. Cold, but not too cold. Nice white snow, but no ice or slush. Blustery winds, but no bone-chilling blasts. Sitting around a fire, but no errands to run. Time to read books and make my garden plans, with no bills to pay and worry about. Too picky. The unnatural expectations of the armchair gardener.

Which reminds me. When we imagine work in the yard, I have found we usually underestimate the actual effort involved. It isn’t until we are deep into the digging and hauling and pulling that we begin to pace our plans to our physical prowess.

Benjamin Franklin

“The eye of the master will do more work than both his hands.”

I have been doing some reading. The combination of two books gave me some thoughts on garden journaling. One a scrapbooking how-to describes a grandmothers beloved scrapbook which was filled with carefully cutout pictures of things like fruits and vegetables, etc. and the other book was a modern version of the Country Diary I posted on, earlier.

The idea was that if we don’t have the artistic desire to watercolor our journals, we could use scrapbooking techniques to brighten them up. That is, if we want something more than utilitarian notes. It was just an idea.

Here are the books I was reading:

Classic Scrapbooking

Author Vera Rosenbluth
Binding Paperback
Brand Brand: Hartley n Marks Publishers
EAN 9780881791631
Feature Used Book in Good Condition
ISBN 0881791636
Label Hartley & Marks
List Price $19.95
Manufacturer Hartley & Marks
Number Of Items 1
Number Of Pages 207
Product Group Book
Product Type Name ABIS_BOOK
Publication Date 1998-12-01
Publisher Hartley & Marks
Studio Hartley & Marks
Title Classic Scrapbooking
Price Disclaimer

Painted Garden

Author Mary Woodin
Binding Hardcover
Brand Brand: Running Press
EAN 9780762415304
Feature Used Book in Good Condition
Is Adult Product 0
ISBN 0762415304
Label Running Press
List Price $17.95
Manufacturer Running Press
Number Of Items 1
Number Of Pages 144
Product Group Book
Product Type Name ABIS_BOOK
Publication Date 2003-04-03
Publisher Running Press
Release Date 2003-04-01
Studio Running Press
Title Painted Garden
Price Disclaimer

The Painted Garden is full of modern watercolor flowers and many garden related quotes in handwriting form. For my taste, I prefer the Country Garden Diary, but this has its appeal, too.

Lunar Eclipse and Colder Weather

by

I am not sure if I will have a chance to get anything in the blog later…. so this may be it for the day:

I forgot to mention that we watched the lunar eclipse the other night. It was an unusually clear night (my poor husband always wants to see the celestial events, but we usually have cloud cover for some reason) . Then he just has to be satisfied with me;)

But back to the eclipse: it was amazing to watch, Our windows were clean and we had a perfect view to the east. My daughter set up her little telescope in the warmth of our living room , and we watched the moon darken and get the rustic glow of the eclipse. That is how it looked here, sort of like a rusty disk covering its bright face. Like a veil of bronzy gauze with just a sliver of silvery white.

We were glad to be inside because we really aren’t used to the cold, yet. Today is very chilly and we are daily feeding our stove its rations of wood. My husband did order the wood. I know it seems like he takes my advice when you read through my blog, but I assure you…. it is only when he really agrees anyway. To actually change his mind on something is another matter. The gory detail of the story will not enter my blog. Not gory…that is the wrong word…that is just a figure of speech…

My garden is still green, we have some flowers still hanging on. Surprisingly the little lobelias haven’t been ruined yet. Calendulas hang on with bits of orange bloom and some kale from the mesclun mix in my veg. garden are a nice blue-green with huge, lady’s summer hat leaves . I haven’t cleaned away my veggie garden yet.

If I wait, I usually have a window of decent and dry weather in the late winter; but that must be taken, because after that the rains start and muck up the ground. You can’t really work it then without creating a problem with the tilth for that year. It is better if I do it in the remainder of the fall.

-but if you read this blog you know I am having trouble making myself conform to my garden’s needs this year.

This is really a good thing. Yes. It means I have made myself concentrate on the inside and not neglect the fall house cleaning and readying for holidays. A little. When I am on the computer I am neglecting everything in those two categories. It is all the evil computer’s fault.

yeh. that’s it. I blame Microsoft.