Recored Breaking Be Damned

I'm done with breaking winter records and so is my crazy bougainvillea. Deer Isle and my garden have been the recipients of over 6 feet of snow within the past month. There have also been record-breaking cold temperatures, I don't want to know any of the details about them. If I ignore the facts, perhaps less plants will die, that is my strategy. This is a picture of my crazy bougainvillea also in the act of ignoring and beginning to bloom in my studio despite the pile of snow in the outdoors (the pile is taller than me). I have read that snow is poor man's fertilizer - that the snow captures nitrogen from the atmosphere as it falls, and I can look forward to a lush-er season because of the snow. I therefore anticipate a veritable jungle, given the depth of "nitrogen" on the gardens.

2015 Seed Order

Here are the only seeds I plan to buy (someone should remind me in June that I said that in February). They arrived Saturday - I did not crop the dish or the computer out of the picture so that perhaps one can discern that seeds are all 1/4 lb. packets. Shady Woodland Mixture, Beneficial Insect Attractant Mixture, Bee Feed Mixture, Butterfly and Hummingbird Mixture, Xeriscape Mixture Eastern US... "Mixture" is clearly the operative word. My plan is to sow them mid-May, water as needed for a few weeks and see which things germinate/grow/survive the slugs and deer, etc. and which survivors attract local pollinators. Survivors/Attractors get kin.

Reflecting

Because there is a new blizzard and because I have read through my current seed catalogs to the point that the catalogs themselves are tired, I have been looking at pictures of my property and the progress. Once upon a time, there was a cabin, a neglected trailer next to the cabin, and a pond. No walkways, no gardens - although there was a significant amount of Comptonia proclaiming that sweet plants could indeed live here. This Google Earth photo says so much to me: the trailer is replaced by the main pollinator garden, there is an interlocking series of paths to the pond, to the goose Palace, to the rhododendron gardens, through the woods (plural), to the deer feeding station. Every inch of path was built with cardboard and gravel and a wheelbarrow. In the beginning, the driveway was a series of holes fringed by long reaching fingers of alders. No longer. The ankle-biting blackberry vine ground cover is replaced by a hundred other plants that welcome both my ankles and a host of helpful invertebrates. So much has changed. I will hold tight to the thought that the property is all resting under the newest blanket of snow, waiting to explode into green once again.