Good morning, and here's to do-overs! Welcome to Saturday Morning Garden Blogging.
The week between Christmas and New Year's was cccooooold! Not arctic-blast cold, but the thermometer didn't top freezing until December 31, and lows have been in the single digits and teens. New Year's Day was the warmest day at 40°. Even worse, we've had a lot of cloud cover, so we haven't had sunshine melting off our last snows very quickly.
The month ahead will bring more of the same: January is Denver's coldest month and record lows for each date runs at least -10°. On the other hand, heavy snow is rare, and Chinook winds can bring highs in the 60s and tastes of spring-like weather.
Meanwhile, the large Christmas cactus is blooming spectacularly, loaded with huge blossoms.
Although New Year's is seen as a "new beginning" I find it more a time of clean up the detritus of the last year. Sigh. I hate cleaning.
Yesterday, with Caligula's help, I packed away Christmas. And he is ever so helpful — here he's examining a basket full of ornaments which have been removed from the tree and are awaiting packing. He also tried to steal ornaments which had been wrapped in bubble-wrap and placed in boxes — he knows that stuff wrapped in bubble-wrap is extra-special and should be dragged to his lair. The job definitely was more exciting, as I had to make sure that Caligula was never left alone with an open box of fragile items.
Despite Caligula's assistance — and a two-hour interruption for driving to and back from the foothills to retrieve Elder Son from an overnight New Year's Eve party — I have all the Christmas stuff (except the tree stand) back in the closet. Today I finish off the job by vacuuming up the tree needles. The tree stayed in really good shape this year, so there aren't as many needles as I've seen in previous years.
After that task is finished, I'll pull out the box of seeds and put together my Pine Tree veggie seed order. The seed catalogs have been arriving fast and furious, and every year I get more. I also need to put in an order to Heirloom roses — the Polish Princess gave me a gift certificate along with a tea rose bush. She won't tell me what variety of rose she chose, just that it's "extra smelly" and she knows I'm a sucker for smelly flowers. I'm going to order two Zephirine Drouhin climbing roses, one for either end of the front porch.
I should have some good smelly flowers in the house soon, as the first of the hyacinth bulbs are well budded. Because they got a little too cold in the bar fridge this year, the forced hyacinth have been problematic. With some of the bulbs, it was immediately apparent that they had freeze damage. With others, it wasn't until they failed to produce roots that I could tell that they were frost-bit. When the forcing bulbs arrive in the fall, I now know: double-check that Elder Son hasn't turned down the temperature in the bar fridge to dangerous levels (he stores his soda in there when it's not full of my bulbs).
The other project I want to get going immediately is starting plugs of roman chamomile for the back lawn. I've saved a couple of clear plastic egg cartons (Land O' Lakes brand are the best) to use as mini greenhouses for starting the chamomile. Once the plants are going I'll take them into the office, where the huge eastern exposure windows make a superb place for growing seedlings I want to have a huge head start.
That's what's happening here. What's going on in your gardens?