Each Little World

Dealing with snow, ice and a garden

We've been gardening at this location for more than twenty winters. Many of them have been like our current winter: cold, snowy and icy. Every time the driveway is clear, it seems to snow again. We are careful about what we use to melt any snow or ice on the driveway, knowing it can have a negative effect on our plants, trees and shrubs that line the street and our drive. If you are new to gardening in a snowy climate or would like to see if you are helping or harming your garden with your snow removal techniques, this article on the Chicago Botanic Garden's website tells you everything you need to know.  

One of my favorite images from the Chicago Botanic Garden that Mark took on a winter visit a number of years ago. We went to hear U.K. garden designer, Dan Pearson. 

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Just saw this excellent list of winter garden advice from Proven Winners, so I am linking to it here.

Is winter over yet?

It started snowing again sometime after we went to bed Saturday night. I knew it was more than just a potential storm warning when I heard the plows go down our street while I was still half asleep in the early morning darkness Sunday. 

We woke up to a lot of new snow on the ground. The wind was gusting and snow was still coming down as dusk fell Sunday evening. I haven't kept track of every snow storm but it certainly feels like we've been having at least one per week since New Year's Eve. And we're still a month away from the Vernal Equinox! 

The other zonal denial

Since I don't have a greenhouse or room indoors to keep marginal plants alive when the temperatures fall, I've pretty much avoided growing things above my USDA Zone. But in the spring of 2017, I tried a little zonal denial by planting a beautiful Alstroemeria 'Inca Ice' and a Sarcococca 'Fragrant Valley.' Both of these are plants that typically need a zone warmer than where I live. But these varieties were both listed as hardy for my zone. Alas, they died along with a depressing number of older shrubs and trees in the winter of 2017/18 when we had extremely cold temperatures with little to no snow cover. In fact, our biggest snowfall last season happened in late April.

PHOTO: DEC. 15, 2017

When I look at the print garden catalogs that are now arriving in the mail, I always look to see what zones are listed at the end of a plant's description. When I go plant shopping online, I tend to click on all those special ways of digitally searching — like listings of new plants, rare plants or those that a nursery has hybridized themselves.

Now and then I look at what plants a nursery offers that are specifically appropriate for my USDA hardiness zone. When I used my Zone 5 as a search tool recently, I had a bit of a lightbulb moment. Something I've known for as long as I've gardened in Wisconsin was right there in front of me; I realized I had been seeing it but not really acknowledging it in recent years. 

What I saw were the temperatures that go with a Zone 5 designation:

USDA Zone 5a:  —20° to —15° degrees F.

USDA Zone 5b: —15° to —10° degrees F.

In reality, we recently woke up to a low temperature of -28° with a wind chill of -48°,  significantly colder than the expected lows for Zone 5.

PHOTO: MARCH 2, 2017

According to the map, I live in Z5b. I have an urban garden which makes it a little more protected but I have been ignoring, if not denying, that very cold zonal truth. We've had multiple snowstorms since the Winter Solstice (Dec. 21). They've beautifully covered garden with a deep blanket of snow which I hope was enough to protect everything from the Polar Vortex temperatures we just went through. We had a few days were the temps went up into the mid-40s: a change of 70°almost overnight. Then back to snow and freezing rain and snow again. 

Despite all of our talk about warmer weather as part of climate change, it is the drier winter with little snow cover and cold temps like we had last year that is deadly for gardens like mine. Rather than playing with Z6 plants, I should be thinking about Z4 or even Z3. Time to get real in the garden again. No more planting for hotter summers. It's the colder winters that I need to be thinking about when I go plant hunting from now on.

Something wicked this way comes

I took this photo last Thursday afternoon as we were waiting for the next round of ice to fall on us. In a matter of minutes the weather went from from pretty to petrifying. This kind of heavy ice load on the trees and power lines is definitely worrisome. We were lucky and did not lose power though neighborhoods near us were without it for hours.

The wind came up in the evening and lots of twigs and small branches came down. But we all discovered the big thuds we heard on our roofs were not falling branches. It turned out those loud noises that sounded like they were above us were actually at ground level. They were frost cracks: booms resulting when the rainwater in the ground next to house foundations quickly froze. Who knew?!

The sun was out blindingly bright on Friday and Saturday but the cold temperatures meant that barely a drop of ice melted. Our street is pretty clear but many side streets are dangerously slippery and icy. That's our weeping white pine which is right on the other side of the window glass. A dusting of snow came down late Saturday, so the ice is now covered with white. It's too gray today to do anything but stay indoors and try to distract myself from the weather forecast by counting the days until Spring. 

Same old, same old

We are definitely experiencing a return to an old-fashioned winter. Though it didn't seriously get started until the new year, it's been on and off, high and low, rain and snow almost continually. Luckily those chilling Polar Vortex temperatures came while we still had deep snow cover in the garden. I'd guess it was at least a foot deep. But once that cold moved on we got temps in the mid-40s and rain. So the snow is only a couple of inches deep at this point.

Now we're into a mix of alternating freezing rain and snow. But that combination has the garden looking lovely and we have not lost power or had any trees come down which were both possibilities in yesterday's forecast. Luckily there's very little need to travel anywhere for the next few days. 

Compare the amount of snow on the bench in the views above and below to see how the snow cover has changed. The picture below was taken on January 28 and we had another storm just a couple of days later. 

So the sudden loss of snow cover is more extreme than I'd prefer since we have a long way to go before Spring arrives. I definitely don't want to go through the wide-spread loss of plants, trees and shrubs that we experienced last year. I'm sitting tight and trying to get used to these constant swings in the weather — and my mood!

At least the sun is shining . . .

and gloriously! All that brightness reflecting off the snow is shining in our big southern windows and warming up the house. But Group Health Cooperative (our docs), UW Health Sports Medicine Fitness Center (our gym), area schools, UW-Madison, state offices, and the public library system are all closed, along with many local businesses. The three things on my calendar for today were all cancelled and now comes word there won't be any mail delivery.

All of our neighbors put their garbage out, so I guess our great public employees will be going to work as usual. And our newspaper was delivered. I find it all a bit amazing since I've gone to work during many bad snowstorms and dangerous wind chills in years past. You always go to work if your job is at the newspaper or a hospital or the cop shop and a long list of similar places. 

Back in the late 1970s we had a legendary ice storm when I was in grad school. The University did not close. In fact, I well remember driving down my street to get to the U because I had an important exam. I remember it so vividly because there were live wires down on my street that I had to drive around — which gives you a sense of the seriousness of that storm! Though the photo below looks like it's from the 19th century, it is an NOAA image from that storm which was statewide.

But this time around, we've got heat and power, books, digital devices, food, coffee, and a fire in the fireplace. I'm not sure about Mark, but I may stay indoors until Spring arrives!

Beauty between the storms

Mark drove out to our monthly book club meeting yesterday while I stayed in town to go to the opening of the new textile exhibits on campus. He bundled up and allowed enough time to capture these scenes with his camera.

First stop was to fill up the gas tank of his truck. You never want to chance country travel in the winter without a full tank. We're the only members of the book group who live in Madison.

The big "barn" on the Epic Systems campus. 

I'm always amazed at how quickly one leaves the city behind and finds oneself surrounded by farmland.

Mark rarely passes this cemetery without stopping and taking a few shots. But the snow lumps indicating low gravestones were a new sight. 

The spillway in Blanchardville.

It's a balmy 20 degrees F. (-6.66 C.) and snowing as I write this on Monday morning at 10 am (Central time zone). The temperature will get down to single digits tonight and below zero temps overnight. Though it was cold yesterday, it was a sunny and beautiful day. 

The gardening year in review: High and low points of 2018

This past year had a number of unpleasant weather "events" that continue to be prominent in my memory. They make it easy to forget how many lovely and noteworthy moments happened in the garden as well.

PLANTS: Moments like the deep red blooms on Podophyllum 'Spotty Dotty', the delicate pink flowers on my newest Peony, P. 'Nosegay' and the increasingly dramatic flowers on this lady slipper orchid, Cypripedium 'Aki Pastel.' 

And for only the third time in 20 years, Ethel brought her ducklings to the pond. Luckily the fox who's been visiting us did not arrive until recent weeks. We've been fortunate to see him a number of times, but so far he's missed seeing any of our resident bunnies. 

GARDEN GUESTS: We opened the garden to a number of visitors including members of the Central Region of the American Conifer Society in July. There's nothing like seeing your garden through someone else's eyes, especially when they are knowledgeable and experienced gardeners like that group. The view below gives a glimpse of a few of the conifers in our garden.

HORTICULTURAL HELP: Hands down, the best thing about 2018 was the superb person we found to help us in the garden. We've often hired pros to do prunning on our big trees or for projects like the driveway. Last winter put paid to enough shrubs, small trees and our big bamboo, that we hired a team to do some heavy work early in the season. That way we both got to save our backs and knees for more fun projects than digging out rootballs.

Then longtime gardening friends put us in touch with a knowledgeable horticultural helper who assisted me in the garden on and off all summer. She got done in a four-hour shift what would have taken me a few days at minimum. It was fun to work with someone who took such an interest in our garden and was so careful and conscientious. I'm hoping she'll be free to help me again this coming season.

WEATHER: This past spring we had the coldest and snowiest April on record, like many of the states near the Great Lakes. Over the course of April 18/19th, we had our biggest snowfall (photo below) of the 2017/18 winter season at 7.2 inches!!! It also set a record for snowfall for the date and for the coldest high temperature for that date as well at only 33 degrees Fahrenheit.

Unfortunately we are having a rather similar winter at this point with fluctuating temperatures and little snowfall. I am hoping it doesn't mean that we will get most of our snowfall as we go into spring again. 

CLIMATE: Last winter's crazy temperatures and late snow may be a sign of our changing climate. But I'm not ready to make any pronouncement on that as of yet. I am, however, willing to say that the intense rain storms and high rainfall we had this year do seem to be turning into our "new normal," which is a very disturbing prospect. I've written about the amount of water these storms have dumped on us in 24 hours or less a number of times. 

According to an end of the year newspaper article, Madison had 50.64 inches (128.62 cm.) of rain in 2018, a couple of inches shy of the highest annual precipitation set in 1881, according to the National Weather Service’s office in Sullivan, Wisconsin. The 2018 precipitation total was about 47 percent higher than the normal annual amount of 34.48 inches (87.57 cm.), which is determined based on records from 1981 to 2010.

On a positive note, we just elected a governor who believes in science. That means we have a chance — on a state level — to consider these changes and how to address them, if the GOP lame duck legislation has not made that impossible. 

Christmas roses

These Hellebores are a variety that is supposed to bloom at Thanksgiving. That rarely happens here as the cold winter weather stops them just as they're getting started. This year we've had a warm week with temps in the mid to high 40s. Thus one of the clumps of Helleborus niger found the temperatures pleasant enough that it managed to push buds though the leaf clutter. 

But when I tried to pull back the leaves to see what was happening underneath, it was clear that things were still frozen. Our temps are dropping back into the 30s so it's unlikely these flowers will do anything more until spring. 

Its sibling clump across the path was so frozen that I could not even lift off any leaves to check on it. These Hellebores are eight years old and mostly behave like this. They came from the late Seneca Hill Perennials which is the same zone as me but they managed to grow a lot of plants that are impossible here. 

I'm not really complaining. How could I do anything but be cheered by the sight of Hellebores in December. It may be enough to keep my spirits up until March when the garden will start to come to life again.

A crazy gardening year

Mark recently ran into a gardening friend of mine who asked him if I thought it had been a crazy gardening year. "Oh, Linda thinks every year is a crazy gardening year," was his reply. When he told me this I got rather annoyed until I realized he might be right. It seems like every gardener I know in person — or in the blogging world — is fixated on weather and climate more and more. How can we not be when the weather we were used to and designed our gardens for is fluctuating in ways we've rarely experienced in the past. 

This year we lost a lot of trees, shrubs and perennials that were anywhere from a year to 15 years old from a cold winter with no snow until too late to help. Then the cold lingered and we had our biggest snowstorm of the season on April 18th!

Then there was the rain. The official count is a good 10 inches of precipitation above  normal for the year — and they measure it at a location that did not get the 10+ inches that our side of town received in August. So who knows how much my garden actually got? And now we are having days where the high temperatures is anywhere from 10 to 20 degrees below normal. 

In 2017 I was complaining about above average rainfall and rain events until it suddenly stopped at the end of the summer and we had a dry and extremely hot autumn. 2016 was a year to remember for all the right reasons. Mark and I both tried to enjoy beautiful days with just the right amount of heat, sun and rain — knowing it might be a long time before we would again experience such a year. Just how long is anyone's guess.