Thaw

Thirty-four degrees feels like a whole lot of degrees, especially when the degrees are accompanied by zero precipitation. The geese were inspired to walk up the trail to the garden shed. Perhaps they imagined they might find bits of growing vegetation. No such luck. But there is some small degree of thaw - the snow on the roof of the shed, and on my house, recedes a bit further each day. I'm soaking Passiflora incarnata seeds. I brought the potting soil indoors from the shed, wanting the soil to change from a frozen block to a friable and plant-able substance. The chickadees are singing their Spring tune. The time changed last night. It's all slow but it's all change.

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.

Blizzard Topped With More Snow

Within a week, my gardens went from bare and brown to buried under more than two feet of snow. My snowshoes and I are reacquainted and have made numerous loops of the woods, down to the goose Palace and the pond and back up to the house. I can also report that the bottle tree is doing an excellent job of capturing evil spirits as they meander down the driveway. Or do evil spirits slither? In any case, my debris pile now has an insulating snow roof and there are tracks everywhere indicating the feeders are being visited by a wide variety of critters. Several seed catalogs have arrived and January 2015 is hours away from done. This feels like "winter progress."

New Year's Day

I had no true plans for my own holiday supper but was well pleased to see this doe visit with her fawn for their meal. They surprised me and I surprised them as I was clearing the last of the blow-down from the backwoods walkway. I dropped my tools and went indoors so they could dine in peace. All paths are now navigable, the forecast holds no snow cover for plants. Sawing dead limbs and tossing brush will have to content me for a while. I read the following on Garden Rant and liked the words enough to repeat them. It's a good gardening thought for 2015 - shaking hands with the divine.

http://gardenrant.com/2014/12/trees-in-memorium.html

"I hope the New Year brings the opportunity to garden with joy. And even if things will be planted in memorium, I hope we can all take comfort in the fact that we are gardening in collaboration with something grand, and every time we put something in the ground and wait for its transformation, we are shaking hands with the divine."

After-Christmas Walk

Contrary to popular belief that gardening ends in the Fall, I have been "gardening" throughout December. I label any outdoor endeavor as gardening, perhaps that is my reasoning. It has taken me most of the month to tote away the debris from the three Nor'easters. My wildlife shelter/debris pile is immense, I do so hope there is a bunny within it. The fattest-possible gray and red squirrels preside over the bird feeders. The onslaught of 2015 seed catalogs has begun and I read the wildflower/pollinator seed mixes to see what already exists within my garden and might exist should Providence prevail. The rhododendrons seem well, their leaves variously droop and come back to life with each passing bout of cold weather. I have rebuilt the stone walls surrounding the shed door and filled those mini-beds with soil. I believe they are my weed-free, full sun locations for next season. The geese have produced soiled hay as is their job and I have moved that hay to the newest compost area. I loved the all-day rain on Christmas. Soak on, rot on. Walter the Dog and I had the spare time to meander through the back woods. There is a lot of work to be done there as well, to clear the paths for our fourteen year old dog friend Keene, who is quite blind and needs an air-lift over logs. We saw this stellar example of shelf fungi.