gardening: observing, planning, designing, and editing
Two Mondays ago, March 8, when I went to put away my trash can, I noticed the witch hazel. I noticed it by scent–it’s a wonderful scent–a little spicy, but neither heavy nor overwhelming. The plant is a good 50 feet from the sidewalk. In the light of morning, I noticed that its flowers are all going wah hoo! The petals are sticking straight out.
December and January were pretty warm, relatively speaking, and I was wondering how it would affect the witch hazel. Last year this plant bloomed on January 15; not this year. My guess is that the plant did not know that it was officially winter. The ground was not frozen at this point.
I passed a neighbor’s yard on my lunchtime walk, and noticed that the Lenten roses were erupting in flower stalks. I knew I had to check my witch hazel.
It’s blooming. Those are not the only flowers, either. At least a quarter of the buds are open. Those little petals roll up like blow ticklers when the temperature drops below freezing; a cold front is breezing in right now.
This is certainly a little early. Earliest? I am not sure. I will have to check.
The witch hazel is making its move from interesting winter flower to green shrub in the background.
The leaves remain deeply corrugated as they unfurl and reach full size.
What was the question? When will the witch hazel bloom?
Last week, snowstorms and windchill warnings; this week it has reached 50°F twice. Icy rain will follow later in the week, which could make commuting far too exciting.
April 11, 2019. At this point, they are pretty well gone. Two weeks ago, they started crinkling up as it got warmer, but the scent was amazing into the first week of April.
That’s the end of the winter flowers. Spring is here.
The latter half of December and the first week of January felt more like early March than early January. The lawn greened up a bit, as did various ground-cover plants. Continue reading “Ominously Springlike, the Other Shoe Has Finally Dropped”
We’ve had snow, icy fog with heavy frost, rain, and plenty of gloom. Dark days, yes, but I am not going to talk about the thick, dark clouds—they have no redeeming characteristics.
We have awoken to snow-covered plants and cars several times already. This is my kind of snow: pretty, and not sticking much to any pavement that would require shoveling.
I stepped out this morning just to see daylight, and found that there was only one small patch of snow left in my yard. We had quite a pile after the last set of snowstorms, especially in the spot where the driveway snow and the sidewalk snow were piled together.
The witch hazel usually blooms by the end of January, but I thought it could be a little late this year because of all the Alberta clippers that chugged through at the end of December and in the first half of January.
Then the snow started melting. Continue reading “The Witch Hazel Is Blooming”
Generally, the only month without something blooming in the yard is December. The witch hazel that is currently in bloom usually blooms right at the end of January, but in winter 2015, which was memorably wicked, this shrub did not bloom until March 11.
There is one detail: the flowers are quite small. This shrub forces me out the door to look for these flowers. When it drops below freezing, the petals roll up tightly inside the sepals; when it’s warm, the petals unfurl and flutter like tissue paper.