Good morning, and the battle is joined. Welcome to Saturday Morning Garden Blogging.
Nature, apparently, has joined in the War on Halloween and Expansion of Christmas in Denver this week. It's bad enough that at the grocery store candy canes and Halloween candy were on display side-by-side, but a foot and a half of snow, falling over two days, was a little much.
The slower-than-usual rate of the snowfall (inches per hour over far fewer hours is more typical for these major dumps) meant that we didn't have problems with power outages caused by heavy snow accumulating on still-leaved trees, as frequently happens when Denver has heavy October snows.
I'm not sure, however, how my new daphne bush fared: between the natural snowfall, the snow falling off the lilac bush above it, and Da Boys dumping shoveled snow on top of it, it was well buried and what is peeping out from the pile looks well squished. We'll see in a day or two how many broken branches there are.
On Wednesday, as the snow fell, I did some photographic experimentation under the pink glow of the pot-grower approved LED plant light and got this really groovy result. I really didn't want the flash to go off on this shot of the ever-blooming jasmine — but that's the photo that turned out the best.
I had to do something, as I am now totally stymied at getting the bulbs in the ground. When the weather's good, I end up occupied with other things. When I've time to plant, the weather's crappy. Arrrrrgggggh! And there are still a few dahlias and gladiolas in the ground.
At least this time of year the melt out will be swift. Yesterday morning the roads were a complete mess; by mid-day Chinook winds had raised temperatures were up to the mid-40s and the pavement was clear. The sun is Denver's best snowplow; it becomes problematic, though, when we get a snow dump around the solstice, when the short days and low sun angle keeps it from working. And today the forecast high is for the upper 50s, so it will be sloppy for trick-or-treaters, but not very cold.
Unfortunately, the ground will be too soggy this week for me to accomplish any planting. Because I plant so many bulbs I prefer using the bulb auger whenever possible, but if the ground is too wet and heavy the auger doesn't work well and it drains the drill batteries too quickly. So I'm going to concede defeat for the time being and drag the bulbs down to the cold storage space — perhaps by mid-November I'll get a few nice days occurring on a Wednesday or a weekend. The odds are against me, though, as on average November is Denver's 2nd snowiest (after March) and 2nd cloudiest (after May) month of the year. I also need to mow the grass before I can plant the additional crocus bulbs I have to put in the "fairy lawn": long grass really makes a mess if it gets tangled in a bulb auger.
And on the upside, at least this year I'm not struggling with a cold-storage space that isn't cold. Overly-warm weather in the fall has been problematic the last several years. The bulbs for forcing have now been in the bar fridge for a month, so in the next couple of weeks it will be timely to get them started rooting. I've been refining my technique over the years — and gradually paring down to just a few varieties of hyacinth that force quickly in time for Christmas giving. I'll update next week.
That's what's happening here. What's going on in your gardens?