Was I Worried About a Lack of Snow?

As soon as  I voiced my concerns about the lack of snow cover in my garden this winter (see An Open Winter?), it began to snow. These were not big, impressive snow storms, but rather a few inches here and a few inches there. It also wasn’t great snow — often heavy and wet or ending with a top-coat of ice. But it covered my garden and provided some protection from any extreme cold we might get and from freeze and thaw cycles; and I was willing to settle for that.

But then yesterday, I awoke to this scene. This was my idea of perfect snow. The storm blew through overnight, snowing heavily but moving away by daybreak and leaving about 7” of beautiful new snow in its wake. This was the kind of morning when muffled sound and softly diffuse light tell you before you even open your eyes that a winter wonderland awaits you.

This was a perfect snowfall not only because it fell overnight when most people were asleep and not trying to travel, but because it fell while the temperatures were cold (about 10F). The resulting snow was low in moisture, making it light and fluffy. Although it clung to the trees, it wasn’t sticky or heavy. This was perfect powder, ideal for skiing and easy to shovel.

As the sun rose, the sky turned a soft blue and temperatures rose into the twenties – a perfect day for getting out and enjoying the special pleasures of winter. I wouldn’t mind more days like this in the weeks to come.

The Joy of Winter Blooms: GBBD, January 2012

After a long delay, winter has come to the northeast United States. In my part of Maine, snow arrived a few days ago, followed by a dramatic drop in temperatures. Today dawned white and frigid. (Yes, that thermometer reads –10F.)

Indoor blooms are a special treat in this kind of weather. In the heady days of summer, individual plants can get lost in the profusion of flowers. But in the depths of winter, each flower commands attention and is a singular joy.

This year, I’ve been making a special effort to acquire winter flowering houseplants that can bloom in sequence. The newly acquired Christmas cactus (Schlumbergera) bloomed through the holidays and is just about to lose its last flowers.
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My potted cyclamen bloom for much of the year, but they are especially appreciated now. This year, I combined two separate plants, one with white flowers and one with bright pink flowers, into a single large pot, and I’m delighted with the way they now look blooming together. There are additional potted cyclamen on either side of this one, one in a more lavender shade of pink and one red. Not only are all these plants in bloom; they also have many buds, promising flowers for weeks to come.

The winter bloom that is bringing me the most joy today is one of several amaryllis (Hippeastrum) bulbs that I purchased this fall. The first opened its two flowers on Christmas morning (see A Blooming White Christmas) and bloomed through New Year’s Day. The second, Hippeastrum ‘Green Goddess’ began to bloom the first week in January. Today, the four flowers on its first flower stalk are all fully open, and a second set of flowers are just beginning to bloom. In Brent and Becky’s catalog, this flower seemed to be a yellow-green; but mine has bloomed snow white with a green-yellow throat and green midribs. I find it breathtaking, and I can’t count how many hours of joy it has already given me.

Wherever you garden and whatever your climate conditions at this time of year, I hope you have flowers to bring you joy this January day.

Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day is hosted on the 15th of each month by Carol at May Dreams Gardens. Visit her blog to see what’s in bloom this month in gardens around the world.

An Open Winter?

In Maine, people are beginning to wonder if winter 2012 will be an “open winter.” This is a phrase that is used to describe winters with higher than average temperatures and without reliable snow cover. I haven’t been able to find a clear explanation of what the adjective “open” refers to in this description. I think of the woods being open, passable throughout the winter in the absence of deep snow. Others note that it is bodies of water that are open in such winters, when rivers, lakes and ponds never fully freeze.

This didn’t start out looking like an open winter. An early snow in October was followed by more than a foot of snow the day before Thanksgiving. Typically, once we have a significant snowfall in November or December, we have snow on the ground until spring. This year, however, the late November snow was followed by weeks of unseasonably warm weather in which the snow all melted. By the time I got back to Maine for Christmas, the ground was bare. The weather since has alternated between warm, wet periods (rain) and cold, dry periods. Although we have had a little light snow, there is still a lot of bare ground showing.

Those from more temperate climates may assume that an open winter would be a welcome event; and I have certainly heard some people expressing pleasure in our recent warm temperatures and absence of snow. But this is by no means a universal response. Maine’s winter economy – attracting tourists for downhill and cross-country skiing, snowmobiling, and ice fishing – depends on snow and cold, making the current weather pattern worrisome. I’ve noticed that local television meteorologists have begun to apologize for their warm and snowless forecasts.

But open winters are not just bad for the local economy; they’re also bad for the garden. To understand why, you have to understand the protective role of snow. Snow is a wonderful insulator. We often describe the ground as “blanketed” in snow; a better analogy might be that snow is like a down comforter or duvet – light and fluffy with lots of air pockets that trap heat. Good snow cover protects plants from killing cold and from freeze and thaw cycles that can damage plants and even heave them out of the ground.

My garden is on the border of USDA hardiness zones 4b and 5a. We often get overnight low temperatures in winter that are in the zone 4 range (-20F to –25F), but because snow cover insulates plants from those cold temperatures, I grow many perennial plants that are rated hardy only to zone 5. Open winters are likely to be winters with plant losses. This year I’m particularly worried about the newly planted serenity garden. Those plants had only a few months to put down roots and get settled before winter arrived, and they are probably particularly susceptible to both cold and frost heaves. On the other hand, this area seems to be a relatively warm microclimate (the snow always melts in this part of the garden first); time will tell.

Is this year’s open winter is a consequence of global warming, the Arctic Oscillation, or a combination of the two? It’s hard to know. If open winters are going to be more common here, however, I will have to reconsider my fall garden regimen. Up until now, I have simply put away hoses and garden supports in the fall and left winter protection to mother nature. In the future, I may find myself looking to garden bloggers from somewhat further south locations without reliable winter snow cover for advice about other ways to protect plants from the hardships of winter.

Garden Blogs of the Month: January 2012

With the new year, I’m finding time for relaxation and for more attention to blogging – and how better to indulge both than by making the acquaintance of some new garden blogs. In the past few days, I’ve perused the new additions at Blotanical, and I want to highlight two of them here.

Black Walnut Dispatch is a new blog, begun this past November, which has quickly developed a substantial following. Blogger Mary Gray is a freelance garden designer and garden coach with a degree in landscape design, who gardens in the US state of Virginia. She notes that she loves writing almost as much as she loves gardening, and it shows; the quality of writing is at the heart of this blog. And the writing here is characterized by irreverent humor that is laugh-out-loud funny. Some of my favorite posts are her “top ten” lists, like Top Ten New Gardening Show Ideas, Top Ten Most Annoying Garden Buzzwords and Catchphrases of 2011, Top Ten Gardening Gifts from Hell, and Top Ten Most Fearsome Gardening Tools. But don’t let the humor fool you; there is a lot of serious substance in this blog, including garden philosophy, solid research and information, and  practical garden knowledge. This blog has already garnered a great deal of well-deserved attention and was reviewed and recommended by Thomas Rainer at Grounded Design weeks ago, so I’m actually pretty late jumping on the bandwagon. The fact is that I gave Black Walnut Dispatch a cursory glance after reading Thomas’s post, but it didn’t grab me. I think that’s because I didn’t have time to read carefully, and this is a blog that demands and rewards careful reading. If you have not yet seen this blog or if, like me, you passed it by after a quick look, do go visit; I think you’ll be glad you did.

The serious garden content is closer to the surface in Gardening with Bob Dylan, but that content is also accompanied by wit and gentle humor. This blog is based in the UK, in the clay soil of Kent; and its author, Jane, describes herself as “a working gardener” and as “female and not very young.” She also notes that her “other enthusiasms” include “garden literature and Bob Dylan.” Each post in this blog is linked to a Bob Dylan song. I must admit that, even though I’m the right generation, I’m not a big Dylan fan, so a lot of the song allusions are lost on me. But I find particular pleasure in blogs that link gardening to larger themes, and this one uses the Bob Dylan lyrics as a philosophical touchstone to do just that. In Gardening with Bob Dylan, everyday gardening experiences are tied to larger life issues, to serious discussions of garden philosophy and to practical advice on topics like pruning and seed saving. I particularly enjoyed Mary’s discussion of circular shapes in the garden (Round and Round – Eternal Circle) and her advice on late summer pruning (Judicious Cutting – Not Dark Yet). This is a well-written and meaty blog with much to offer the attentive reader.

If, like me, you find winter a time for garden reading, both these blogs would be valuable additions to your reading list.

A Doubly Good New Year: 2012 Jean’s Garden Calendar(s)

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This is my third year of creating holiday gift calendars for family members and friends, and this year’s calendar is a doubly good celebration of the new year – because, for the first time, the calendar includes both my gardens and because, this year, there are two versions.

I didn’t start out intending to create two different versions of this year’s calendar. When I first tried this in 2010, it was an experiment and I opted for a relatively inexpensive calendar printed by Fed-Ex (see A Year of Gifts from the Garden). In 2011, looking for a larger format calendar and better color reproduction, I ordered (considerably more expensive) calendars from Snapfish, a company recommended by another blogger (see A New Year in the Garden). I was delighted with the results and considered the calendars well worth the extra expense. So when it came time to create this year’s gift calendars, I didn’t hesitate in turning to Snapfish again. But a mishap in the printing process resulted in every photograph being marred. After five days of frustrating dealings with Snapfish’s dysfunctional customer support system, I decided to upload my calendar photos to Lulu, which comes highly recommended by Clare at Curbstone Valley Farm. About the same time, I found my way to a website for Snapfish complaints called GetSatisfaction, which turned out to be monitored by Snapfish customer service managers. Within hours after posting a description of my problem there, I had a response from a manager who worked hard and fast to “make it right” for me – reprinting my calendars, having them specially inspected for quality, rush shipping them to me, and refunding half the original cost.

Although Snapfish resolved the problems and produced high quality calendars for me, I decided to go ahead and order a sample from Lulu so that I could compare them. For the most part, I uploaded the same images for both calendars. I couldn’t use the same cover, however, because the Lulu format requires a portrait (rather than landscape) orientation for the cover. Because I like to use an image from the inside of the calendar as a cover, I solved this problem by substituting a collage of three photos (one of which was the right shape to use for the cover) for an image that I wasn’t entirely happy with on my Snapfish calendar. As you can see below, the two calendars use the same images for January-June and for September-December, but they have different images for July and August:

January – Peony (Paeonia lactiflora)	February – A profusion of blue flowers (Amsonia, Tradescantia, and Iris sibirica)
March – Balloon flower (Platycodon grandiflorus) just beginning to open	April flowers in my Gettysburg garden
May – Astrantia	June – The back garden in June
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July [Snapfish version] – Some daylily (Hemerocallis) varieties in my Maine garden	July [Lulu version] – Delphinium (Delphinium cultorum – New Millennium series)
August [Snapfish version] – Summer blooms of tradescantia, geranium, delphinium & heliopsis	August [Lulu version] – Some daylily (Hemerocallis) varieties in my Maine garden
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September – Garden phlox (Phlox paniculata ‘David’)	October – Morning glories (Ipomoea tricolor ‘Blues Brothers’)
November – Golden fall foliage on American Beech tree (Fagus grandifolia)	December – Freezing fog on Eastern Hemlock (Tsuga canadensis)
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So how do the two calendars compare in quality? In a side-by-side comparison, the Lulu calendar is the clear winner. As Clare has reported, the color reproduction from Lulu is superb, without any of the problems with oversaturated colors that I have experienced with other vendors. Moreover, this higher quality comes at a lower price: the base price of the Lulu deluxe calendar is lower than that of the similar Snapfish product, and Lulu also offers a volume discount for orders of five calendars or more (which Snapfish does not). As an added benefit, I can make my calendars available for purchase from Lulu. (To learn more, click here.)

Next year, Lulu will be my choice for creating my gift calendars. This year, I am happy to have two versions of  calendars celebrating my two gardens and providing a double promise of garden pleasures in 2012.