Garden Bloggers Bloom Day, February 2015

When May Dreams Carol proposed her idea of bloggers everywhere posting photos of what was in bloom each month, I was up for it, and made a post for the first Garden Bloggers Bloom Day on February 15th, 2007. That was a long time ago by internet-standards... Carol's idea has staying power!

Sometimes I post for GBBD, sometimes not - but I wanted to be part of the 8th anniversary. This winter has been relatively normal, bringing some rain and multiple freezes, with the lowest temperature in my garden about 20F. That was cold enough  to knock off many tender plants. Then some recent warm days spurred plants into bloom - these daffodils began opening last week. The clump has increased - there were only 3 flowers in 2007.

Yesterday was mild with strong winds fluttering the leaves and petals as I tried to take photos. A cold front arrived this morning, dropping temperatures 30 degrees in an hour, with a good chance it will freeze tonight and tomorrow night.

As I formatted yesterday's photos and wrote about the weather, the feeling of déjà vu was so strong it made me dizzy. I reread that first GBBD post from 2007 and realized that most of the plants that bloomed eight years ago are blooming now. They've have some bad springs and some good springs, but they're still in the game.

Here's the Carolina Jessamine/Gelsemium sempervirens. Yes, those individual flowers may freeze, but the vine has thousands of buds in various stages of development, so reserved buds can still live to bloom later.

 

More of the yellow daffodils grow in front, with the clump increasing slowly. A light freeze won't ruin them - but they'll collapse if a February heat wave pops up and fries them.

These bulbs of Narcissus tazetta 'Grand Primo' were blooming for the first time in 2007. They look happy and quite pretty in this spot near the veranda steps. However, you may like them better in a photo than up close in real life. Some people call them fragrant, but I think they stink.

In Texas we buy pansies and violas in late autumn and enjoy their flowers until the heat gets them in late spring.

Texas Mountain Laurel is a beloved native shrub here in Austin, bearing clusters of fragrant, deep violet-blue flower. We eagerly await their bloom every year. In some parts of Austin they are trouble-free, but I've learned not to hope too hard for flowers in my far NW neighborhood, where a shrub covered in buds can lose every floret over one cold night.

That 'Fantasia Salmon' geranium blooming in the breakfast room in February 2007? Not blooming today, but it has buds, and May Dreams Carol says buds count! It's grown taller, too.

Just as in 2007, Rosemary is in bloom, along with the Sweet Olives outside. But now there are multiple varieties of Rosemary and double the number of Sweet Olives. Zoom in on the geranium photo and you can see buds, flowers and tiny lemons developing on the Meyers lemon, and a holiday cactus/Schlumbergia still in bloom.

Missing from 2007 is the Coral Honeysuckle, alive but not thriving in increasing shade with competition from  tree roots. Adding some gaudy to the list of blooms for February 2015 is the just-past-prime Pius X Camellia.

And with luck this old Cemetery Iris will still be able to open

and the buds of Four Nerve daisy will raise their bright faces to the sun

ready to shine for Garden Bloggers Bloom day in March. 

If your garden is under snow and winter seems endless take heart - it may be slow but it will come!

This post was written by Annie in Austin for her Transplantable Rose blog.

Two Bad Winters in a Row

This winter was supposed to be different! I was sure there would be less frost damage because the wimpy plants had bailed after the very unusual 13ºF of January 2010, right? The covers and lights used on the in-ground Meyer's Lemon & Mexican Lime trees helped keep the stems alive, but they'd still lost all their leaves and had no fruit in 2010.

We had space for the two medium-size plumerias, a ginger, Stapelias, the allspice bush, staghorn fern and the smaller lemon inside the house & garage. So if we had a normal winter, all should be well.

But the big plumeria had grown too tall to fit inside the garage.... what to do, what to do?

I decided to ignore the citrus - they no longer fit inside their N-sulate fabric pillowcases - and in November I took that fabric, ripped out the stitches and tried a different idea. The rain barrel had been moved and the little brick-lined sun-catching cove next to the chimney was accessible. I sewed the fabric into one large curtain and Philo put a rod close up against the wall over the window. My idea was to shove the too-tall plumeria and more marginal plants against the window, using the curtain to trap any heat that escaped through the glass from the house, counting on additional heat being captured and released from the bricks.
Winter came, things froze, and you know, the idea worked great as long as the low temperatures were in the mid-2o's - that plumeria still had leaves 10 days ago!

Then last week, as the north was buried in 2-feet of snow, we were hit with a long-lasting cold snap, going down to 14ºF or 15ºF . A power glitch hit Monday, while we were still warm - and it was farewell, computer! On Tuesday February 1st, before the cold came, I piled burlap bags around the pots and swagged a big sheet across the bottom of the curtain. We unplugged the birdbath fountain so the motor wouldn't burn out... and crossed our fingers.

The wind howled all night long, whipping things around the yard and unsettling the sleepers as the temperatures dropped. With daylight on Wednesday we could see the wind had flipped the yellow adirondack chair and tossed a patio umbrella across the yard like a javelin. The wind kept pulling the curtain off the plants. Each time I'd go out to tuck them in the wind would whip the clothes off again. There was no sun in the cove, so no extra heat gathered by the bricks.

The temperatures stayed below freezing so we set up makeshift birdbaths, tapping out the ice blocks and refilling with warm water when the water froze. Rolling brown-outs didn't hit our neighborhood too hard but Vertie's neighborhood didn't have power stay on long enough to keep warm
The power was more stable the next day, and early Friday about an inch of snow lay softly on the garden, looking extremely decorative for awhile- and melting by Saturday as we returned to the 50's or 60's.
Another cold snap is predicted for this coming Tuesday night, so today I went around with the camera. With luck, the plants that usually lose their tops, go dormant and return -the Mexican mint marigold, cupheas, Mexican honeysuckle, crinum lilies, salvias, etc. - will still come back in spring. But I have no experience with other plants that were new in 2010 - will the Lion's Tail or the two Abutilons live? How about the pink Malvaviscus?

Can these blackened Shrimp Plants spring new life from the roots?

Will the frozen Meyer's Lemon drop this set of leaves and have the strength to releaf two springs in a row?

The asparagus ferns in the hanging baskets don't look too bad, but I was fooled last year

I brushed my hand across one and the resulting shower of fern bits does not bode well for their longterm survival

An African aloe from Pam/Digging that survived January 2010 looks bad - and feels mushy.

The native Barbados Cherries and the two dwarf pomegranates are already dropping their leaves

Inside the fabric tent the Thai Lime looks good at the base but frost damage shows on leaves at the top. I still don't know if any parts of the tall plumeria will live. The fragrant ginger always loses its top so that doesn't worry me yet, and the 'Dorota Blue' scutellaria looks fine, as does the Scilla peruviana in the front container.
It seems the curtain idea is a qualified success so far - and if there had been a better system for keeping the curtain tight in wind it might have been a real success.
The evergreens that made it last winter look alright so far... and there are still flowers! The pansies weren't impressed by a mere 15 degrees -

Nor was the parsley - although the Sweet marjoram behind it was shocked

And if the Variegated ginger could talk, it might have thanked me for bringing it into the garage.