Frost Advisory

Please don't kill my plants...

At least once each spring I find myself covering my plants for a late frost advisory. Tonight weather forecasters projected we'd be down to 28F, but they've raised it to 31F last I checked. At any rate, I'm running about the back yard, scrambling to find vessels to cover my plants for one night. I would not reccommend anyone use this method for more than one or two nights, but it had worked for me in the past... I take the empty containers I save and re-use, flip em' over, and create a little warm spot for the plant to spend the night. Here are my tomatos:

Here are some of my roses (note: I'm almost ready to throw out the arborvitae... they have a few more weeks to impress me).

What's pretty now?

Nevertheless, there are a few beautiful thing in the garden right now. Here's Lamb's Ear, covered with water from an afternoon rain. About 2-3 weeks ago when I uncovered it from mulch it was quite beat-up, but now, it's wonderful.

This is my neighbors tree, a 1/3 of which hangs over the back of our yard. The tree is massive, I wouldn't know how to begin to describe the dimensions to you; I believe it's a Red Maple. The leaves are a dark eggplant purple all summer. I never bothered to get close-up to this beauty in the spring... would you just look at this? How could I have not noticed it makes these little flowers in the spring?

The hostas are all poking up, standing so orderly in neat little clumps all around the yard. The previous owner put a line of hostas encircling the house. I've since divided and divided and doubled the depth of the bed... and begun my own little hosta obsession.

Before I moved into this area of the country I never paid any mind to lilacs. You can't grow them where I grew up in southern california as they need winter to thrive. When we moved in to our house the previous owner had put in a dozen lilacs along the back property line. To say I fell in love is an understatement. These flowers are so beautiful and fragrant, I feel so lucky to have them in my yard. I've taken great care to learn to properly prune them, and this year seems to be paying off. Many of the early bloomers are forming buds. In about 2 weeks I think I"ll be showing vases full of them!

I am so excited to see this baby emerging. Last spring I took on growing lupines from seed. Usually when I grow a perennial from a seed packet I get 2-3 good plants from the packet that come back year after year. Several of the lupines are coming back strong. Not pictured here are dozens of bee balm plants I also grew from seed last spring... they are all strong now, too. A great year for seedling returns here.

Here's a more typical result of a seed packet for me: one lone survivng Maltese Cross. For a 99-cent seed packet I'll take one healthy plant happily.

Just incase all the growth dies in the frost tonight, here is my Morden Centennial rose, full of life, and ready to make some buds.


The radishes are coming...


This is what the sky looked like as I was out there taking pictures. A very pretty sunset.

My front bulbs bed looks a little silly. I expanded the bed in late fall, removing more grass. Before that I had planted bulbs. I could not fill the whole bed with bulbs b/c I hadn't put any plants in the rest of the bed yet. At any rate, here's the bulbs together, muscari and apricot-colored tulips, with bleeding heart, allium (not yet blooming) and snapdragons.

A close-up of the stunning bleeing heart. It still seems too early for this to bloom?


So much to come this week. I'll be putting in some more bare root roses, planting my annual seeds (zinnia and cosmos and more...), transplanting some of this years perennial seedlings, moving my containers out for good (they are all back in tonight!), and planting some more veggies and herbs. I am so excited! Deep breath. Check back soon.