Good morning, and a month to go! Welcome to Saturday Morning Garden Blogging.
The weather has been pretty unexciting here in Denver — although one wouldn't know it from all the hype we got over a forecast for two to three inches of snow on Wednesday.
The snow was a no show — we got a bare trace. Temperatures did drop down to the high just at freezing on Thursday, but for the most part we've been normal, normal, normal with highs in the 40s and lows in the teens and twenties. The sun came out again yesterday and the radiant warmth makes me feel positively... sunny.
The forecast for the week ahead is for more of the same — and we're heading into February, when Denver starts to see the grip of winter slip. Meanwhile, more forced hyacinth are coming into bloom — I think this one is Delft Blue.
...and this one is Fondant, the softest pink of all my hyacinth. I've dozens more hyacinth on the brink of blooming — next week I should have pictures of my most stunning and unusual hyacinth vase with it's flower in bloom.
I have resisted most of the lure of the stack of garden porn. The one exception was an order of Glamini dwarf gladiolus, plus a couple of new varieties of cranesbill which I'll be splitting with the Polish Princess. I've been soooo good, I may have to reward myself with an order of dahlias from Dutch Gardens!
Last week my heart was gladdened when so many jumped in offer help to one of our regulars who faced a tight gardening budget this year. I'm sure a lot of us have more seeds and other plant materials than we need, while others may be facing limited resources. While I've already mailed off my excess seed, later on — after I find out how many of my stored bulbs, tubers and corms have made it through the winter — I'll likely have more than I can use, as well as facing my annual excess of fuchsia cranesbill and light purple asters. It's been a couple of years since we've had a spring seed and plant exchange — should do another in a couple of weeks? Or would later work better?
That's what's happening here. What's going on in your gardens?