January blahs

I think there was a sunny afternoon earlier this week, but I'm not really sure. It's been endlessly gray, though not as snowy as the garden needs. The latest storm dropped some rain that turned into about an inch of wet snow. Before that happened I wandered around the garden to see if any plants were pushing up, confused by the rain and warmer weather. 

No Hellebore buds or snowdrops were visible, but a disturbing amount of new Alliums had started growing. I think it means I did not plant them deep enough. Whether their flower buds will still be viable come summer is the big question. 

The ground was soft enough that I was able to push plastic plant tags right back in where they'd been disturbed, Not a good sign in mid-January. Some plants, like Autumn ferns (Dryopteris erythrosora 'Brilliance') are looking surprisingly good despite extremely cold temperatures and snow. 

I've been taking advantage of this down time to work on more Blurb books: One about the ducks who visited our garden each year, two using old family photos and one of garden columns from my newspaper days and the early blog. Working on them is keeping me from obsessing about the winter garden and ordering too many plants on-line.

Comments

[Kris P]

Weather woes abound this year it seems. I hope your new Alliums do better than you anticipate. I always worry about my bulb plants until I actually see flowers from them. Your Blurb books are a great distraction.

[Kathy from Cold Climate Gardening]

I feel like it's perpetual November here. I know someone gardening in Illinois who's having alliums come up prematurely. The embryonic flower is down in the bulb. Hopefully it will wait until the time is right.

[Linda Brazill]

kathy — Thanks for that info on the bulb flower. It is hard getting used to the "new normal" weather.

[hb]

Are ornamental Alliums day-length sensitive like edible onions are?

Hopefully the flowers hold off until they can display their beauty at the proper time.

Here where we've had so many warm dry winters in a row, relatively cool temperatures and all the rain has enabled plants to slow way down for a few weeks--it's very strange--we're not used to it!

[Frank]

'Perpetual November'. I think Kathy summed up my thoughts perfectly.
In spite of that cold blast most things look as fresh as they did a few months ago. I like that things are sprouting (here the snowdrops ARE starting to show) but I worry about March.
Agreed that some more sun would be nice.