Photo Karen Graham.
I’d rather have the flowers
Our simple fathers knew
Than these new-fangled blossoms
Of every shape and hue
I’d rather have a skylark
Than a parrot at the Zoo.
~ Reginald Arkell – Green Fingers ~
February, the supposedly short month, felt endless this year.
A Wuthering Heights weekend of blowing snow towards the end of that month wiped out about half of my carefully shovelled paths. Looking outside and seeing snow tornadoes for days on end was discouraging to say the least.
I’m not sure why I thought that February would be easier than January. It was possibly the consequence of being an eternal optimist.
I hope that my optimism will be on firmer ground in March.
March, of course, starts out as winter and ends with snowdrops and the beginnings of spring.
I have been enjoying looking at pictures of naturalized snowdrops in an English gardening magazine. It’s a wonderful dream book at this time of year.
Some of the English gardens go in for exotic varieties of snowdrops with green stripes and the like. I prefer the ordinary small white ones. No need to gild the lily. These are miraculous enough after a long winter.
An expanse of naturalized snowdrops is one of the easiest things to accomplish. They will grow easily in a lawn or woodland garden. They’re very forgiving and not at all fragile when they’re dug up and moved around. I move some of mine around every spring while they’re flowering which isn’t something I would do with any other bulb.
Indoor plants are responding to the much longer days. I’m amazed at the prolific pink flowers on my rescued nicotine. It was just starting to grow last fall when I dug it up and brought it in. The original flower stalk had aphids on it so I cut it back drastically. That eliminated most of the aphids and three new flower stalks appeared in early February.
The pink nicotine is about four feet high including flowers. It’s not as huge and dramatic as the N. sylvestris that I brought in last year thank goodness. But it’s big enough and the flowers are a glorious contrast to winter outside.
Spring break up will almost certainly be dramatic this year with the huge amount of accumulated snow. I’m looking forward to the quiet creek turning into white water for a week or so. And I’m looking forward to sitting on the porch and watching the snow melt.
I wouldn’t be unhappy if the melt water washed out the big beaver dam. A big washout happens every few years and this might be one of those years. I have seen the beaver pond disappear overnight to be replaced by a huge expanse of mud. The mud greens up with new plants remarkably quickly and you would never know there had even been a pond there.
Onward to spring. We will see what happens.
By Jill Williams
