Good morning, and I remembered! Welcome to Saturday Morning Garden Blogging.
Denver has continued its weather pattern of once-a-week snow, although this weekend's bout is lasting a bit longer. We had a shot of sloppy snow last Sunday morning, quickly melted off the roads by the afternoon sunshine and early in the week we warmed to the mid-40s. The current storm moved in last Thursday afternoon, bringing temperatures down below freezing, continuous cloud cover and off-and-on snow forecast to last until Monday. Ick.
I'm proud to report, however, that before the storm moved in I did remember to re-fill the wiper fluid reservoir in my car before I ended up driving down the street with a windshield covered with tire-thrown muck and a dry reservoir.
Zasu Pitts, meanwhile, has been prowling the house and munching on...
my Valentine roses. It happens every year — both Zasu and Caligula think cut flowers make a wonderful salad.
Meanwhile, we live through the late-February-blahs. I know spring is coming — I have bulbs up all over the front yard, and any day now I'll come home from work to find that a crocus or two has bloomed. The skies are light before 7:00 a.m., and we're less than a month away from Daylight Savings Time. However, it's been too cold, and the continuous snow dumps make it too wet, to accomplish any of those early outdoor gardening chores I'm just itching to take on.
This weekend it's timely to transfer the roman chamomile plugs from their egg-carton starter cells into larger homes — bathroom-sized Dixie cups. I lost a few cells when I forgot to water them, but I'll still have 30 plugs to go into the backyard grass patch. After they're repotted I'll take advantage of the good natural light at the office to extend my nursery space, using the seed-starter set up (which includes a heat mat) now occupied by the chamomile to start some heavenly blue morning glories. Once the morning glories are well started, I'll take them to the office, leaving the seed-starter for the tomatoes, peppers and eggplant.
I think I'll also start the snap pea seeds sprouting. Weather permitting, they should go into the ground in mid-March, and three to four weeks is about right to have them in pots. Timing just gets so difficult here in March — you try to plan ahead, but if it's too wet to prep the veggie patch there's just nothing one can do about it. The worst was 2003 — we got over two feet of snow in a storm starting on March 17, followed by several lesser storms. It was mid-April before I could get the veggie patch prepped.
I also have some cuttings from a citronella geranium which are well-rooted and need to go into pots — more plants for the office. Because I need to rigorously segregate new plants from the mite-infested plants which summered outside last year, I have nowhere near enough lighted space at my house, and, as the metal halide light is installed in the cold storage area of the basement, and I still have tubers and bulbs there, I can't open the doors and allow it to warm up yet. I feel like a juggler trying to get the timing right and find space for everything.
That's what's happening here. What's going on in your gardens?