Snow is a blanket
Apr. 15th, 2026 09:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormWe actually got a snowfall warning last night and it snowed all night. It's not colder than any particular April day, and the snow is struggling to stick and melting into the soil but because it snowed all night there's still a blanket of wet, heavy white on everything. It's a couple inches deep. The sky is white. It's very calming. There's no question about it staying long; in Vancouver there were "snow days" and this will likely last a day and water the ground gently.
The last few days I've been wandering around checking to see which of my discounted perennials from last fall managed to survive. I have no experience with herbaceous perennials in this kind of winter, and in Vancouver it never really got cold enough for a perennial to look fully dead; there was always some little bit of green at the centre of a rosette or the base buds of a dead stem. Here, the first day I looked around I thought several things hadn't made it: eryngium, trollius, leucanthemum, perovskia. The salvia and strawberries had clear tiny green though. By yesterday there were bits of sprouts on all the above except the perovskia. The coneflowers aren't showing anything yet either. I don't see the dicentra or pulmonaria but they're in shadier areas, along with the hostas, so the ground is still frozen there. I wouldn't expect to see much there, though daffodils are already pushing up. Alchemilla made it in one spot, the other is still frozen. I'm very happy about that, I really love alchemilla. And there's the plant which I always forget the name of, super grey fuzzy leaves with neon pink flowers on tall spikes, that used to be in my grandma's garden. It came through evergreen! Can't see the coreopsis yet. Some of those pink peony buds are pushing up!
I'd like to add: rockfoil, columbine, daylilies, ?delphinium (they don't like clay), sanguisorba, baptisia, persicaria, nativer/hardier coneflowers, that tall lobelia, more hen-and-chicks semper-(viren? viven? I confuse them, I can't believe they survive the winter here) and either more sedum or just take cuttings from my current ones, maybe some of the new ajugas, and nepetas.
It's really neat to start to gently become friends with the new plants. Last year was just shoving them in the ground and maybe making them a label. Now I get to go walking with Solly (now at 10 min 4x/day) along the edges of the beds and sometimes on my own, bending and poking at what's coming up or at the center of an apparently dead rosette to see if there's that hint of unfurling green yet. I get to learn what the sprawl of each plant's dead leaves look like: still there, or did they rot away under the snow in the winter? I get to learn when they start to green up, whether the crowns have multiplied into multiple buds, whether those first leaves are simpler than the older leaves or just smaller. I get to learn whether the new shoots come from the crown a couple at a time or all at once.
Soon I'll learn how fast they unfurl, how they sit before they bloom, how much they multiply over winter for real and how they respond to, well, everything. I love making new plant-friends. There's something about-- the plants have been around for mostly centuries, I think the domestic florist sanguisorbas are fairly modern, and people will be looking at them and growing them after I'm gone. The plants aren't going anywhere. I can make slow friends with a plant, learn about it, and then for the rest of my life when I meet that plant it'll be an old friend calling to me. It might be a surprise, in a city on a corner or back lot somethere. It might be in my own garden, the same plant year after year as it responds to different seasons and my knowledge deepens. Either way it's a pleasure that I can rely on.
The woody perennials are slower to come out. That's for the best since it's still cool, but the amelanchier buds are silvering with bits of fur as they swell, the manchurian apricots and a few of the mirabelle plums have green stems, the sea buckthorn is definitely thinking about opening buds, and even the tiniest of the corylus, the beaked ones which grew more slowly than the hybrids, are getting that indefinable robust feeling that shows up before the buds actively swell but when the plant isn't hunkered down being frozen solid anymore.
In the herb garden it looks like a thyme survived, the horehound and sorrel look good, the mint looks good, and the clary sage is happy. Weirdly the weld in the upper garden is good but the woad looks like a green smear, not sure if there's a crown left in there, but in the herb garden I can't find the weld but there is still at least one or two each of woad and chinese woad.
Looks like the roses that were ok in fall are still ok, though it'll be a bit, with the maybe exception of stanwell perpetual. The scotch roses don't seem to transplant well here, but we'll see if stanwell comes back from the roots. For this year I ordered a couple ramblers from the save-the-ramblers project and finally found a source for Hazeldean (!!). I should probably take some currant and rose cuttings.
I somehow ended up with something like 270 tomato transplants, though very few peppers since the aphids got to them. I did a bunch of perennial onions this year that I should start hardening out, the goal is to put them in the perennial beds. It's time to put favas in the ground outside and brassicas inside.
As of this morning the vet has told me to take Solly on walks for 10 min 4x/day for 7-10 days, then 15 mins, then no more than 20 until she gets her x-rays in 8 weeks. 20 min 4x a day will be at the upper limit of my ability, so the disability people had better be done with me until after that. I cannot express how much joy I get being in the garden again, and having to cut myself off from that in order to only do medical calls or paperwork for months is a real problem.
In the meantime I have been told the florist in town (my town, usually too small for a reliable coffee shop, has a gift shop/florist) has a bunch of cardboard regularly, so I'll see if I can grab a bunch from her to re-sheet-mulch everything and get ahead of the grass and potentially summer drought a bit.
Reminder to myself; if I'm unhappy, step outside. Just step outside, if you can, even if it's just to collapse a couple feet from the door.
The last few days I've been wandering around checking to see which of my discounted perennials from last fall managed to survive. I have no experience with herbaceous perennials in this kind of winter, and in Vancouver it never really got cold enough for a perennial to look fully dead; there was always some little bit of green at the centre of a rosette or the base buds of a dead stem. Here, the first day I looked around I thought several things hadn't made it: eryngium, trollius, leucanthemum, perovskia. The salvia and strawberries had clear tiny green though. By yesterday there were bits of sprouts on all the above except the perovskia. The coneflowers aren't showing anything yet either. I don't see the dicentra or pulmonaria but they're in shadier areas, along with the hostas, so the ground is still frozen there. I wouldn't expect to see much there, though daffodils are already pushing up. Alchemilla made it in one spot, the other is still frozen. I'm very happy about that, I really love alchemilla. And there's the plant which I always forget the name of, super grey fuzzy leaves with neon pink flowers on tall spikes, that used to be in my grandma's garden. It came through evergreen! Can't see the coreopsis yet. Some of those pink peony buds are pushing up!
I'd like to add: rockfoil, columbine, daylilies, ?delphinium (they don't like clay), sanguisorba, baptisia, persicaria, nativer/hardier coneflowers, that tall lobelia, more hen-and-chicks semper-(viren? viven? I confuse them, I can't believe they survive the winter here) and either more sedum or just take cuttings from my current ones, maybe some of the new ajugas, and nepetas.
It's really neat to start to gently become friends with the new plants. Last year was just shoving them in the ground and maybe making them a label. Now I get to go walking with Solly (now at 10 min 4x/day) along the edges of the beds and sometimes on my own, bending and poking at what's coming up or at the center of an apparently dead rosette to see if there's that hint of unfurling green yet. I get to learn what the sprawl of each plant's dead leaves look like: still there, or did they rot away under the snow in the winter? I get to learn when they start to green up, whether the crowns have multiplied into multiple buds, whether those first leaves are simpler than the older leaves or just smaller. I get to learn whether the new shoots come from the crown a couple at a time or all at once.
Soon I'll learn how fast they unfurl, how they sit before they bloom, how much they multiply over winter for real and how they respond to, well, everything. I love making new plant-friends. There's something about-- the plants have been around for mostly centuries, I think the domestic florist sanguisorbas are fairly modern, and people will be looking at them and growing them after I'm gone. The plants aren't going anywhere. I can make slow friends with a plant, learn about it, and then for the rest of my life when I meet that plant it'll be an old friend calling to me. It might be a surprise, in a city on a corner or back lot somethere. It might be in my own garden, the same plant year after year as it responds to different seasons and my knowledge deepens. Either way it's a pleasure that I can rely on.
The woody perennials are slower to come out. That's for the best since it's still cool, but the amelanchier buds are silvering with bits of fur as they swell, the manchurian apricots and a few of the mirabelle plums have green stems, the sea buckthorn is definitely thinking about opening buds, and even the tiniest of the corylus, the beaked ones which grew more slowly than the hybrids, are getting that indefinable robust feeling that shows up before the buds actively swell but when the plant isn't hunkered down being frozen solid anymore.
In the herb garden it looks like a thyme survived, the horehound and sorrel look good, the mint looks good, and the clary sage is happy. Weirdly the weld in the upper garden is good but the woad looks like a green smear, not sure if there's a crown left in there, but in the herb garden I can't find the weld but there is still at least one or two each of woad and chinese woad.
Looks like the roses that were ok in fall are still ok, though it'll be a bit, with the maybe exception of stanwell perpetual. The scotch roses don't seem to transplant well here, but we'll see if stanwell comes back from the roots. For this year I ordered a couple ramblers from the save-the-ramblers project and finally found a source for Hazeldean (!!). I should probably take some currant and rose cuttings.
I somehow ended up with something like 270 tomato transplants, though very few peppers since the aphids got to them. I did a bunch of perennial onions this year that I should start hardening out, the goal is to put them in the perennial beds. It's time to put favas in the ground outside and brassicas inside.
As of this morning the vet has told me to take Solly on walks for 10 min 4x/day for 7-10 days, then 15 mins, then no more than 20 until she gets her x-rays in 8 weeks. 20 min 4x a day will be at the upper limit of my ability, so the disability people had better be done with me until after that. I cannot express how much joy I get being in the garden again, and having to cut myself off from that in order to only do medical calls or paperwork for months is a real problem.
In the meantime I have been told the florist in town (my town, usually too small for a reliable coffee shop, has a gift shop/florist) has a bunch of cardboard regularly, so I'll see if I can grab a bunch from her to re-sheet-mulch everything and get ahead of the grass and potentially summer drought a bit.
Reminder to myself; if I'm unhappy, step outside. Just step outside, if you can, even if it's just to collapse a couple feet from the door.
