ELIZABETH'S SPRING FEVER
We just switched from our winter home in AZ to our spring/summer/fall home in WA. Went from 80 degrees F and sunny to 50 degrees F and rainy. (I don't mind, because my allergies were giving me fits in AZ. Can you say ACHOO, twenty-five times? In twenty-five seconds?)
As soon as I got home, I checked my two long planters to see what had survived the winter and what hadn't. Since it got down to 20 degrees F at the water for several days running, I was expecting total loss.
It wasn't quite that bad.
The patch I reserve for growing herbs--basil, rosemary, two kinds of sage, two kinds of parsley, tarragon, and thyme--had mostly survived. The Italian parsley was toast, as was the tarragon and basil. (Basil hardly ever winters over so that wasn't a surprise. Ditto for tarragon.) The picture isn't my herb garden, but you get the idea....
The flower sections of my planters were frozen toast. Absolute carnage. Nothing wintered over, even the bulbs.
So I went to the nursery, bought primroses, petunias, lobelias, a flowering ground cover with cute orange blooms, herbs, and fertilizer.
More than a hundred little plants.
And these are just the low-growers. I've got some tall ones to pick out when they're available--iris, snapdragons, chrysanthemums, roses, big marigolds, dahlias, and whatever else catches my eye in four weeks.
One hour a day of stoop labor is all I can take, so I still have a few more of the original hundred plants to put in the ground.
Oh, my aching back. Literally.
Yeah, I'm a wuss.
But in a few months I'll be a wuss with a delicious herb garden and a rainbow of blooms.
Until then, I'm enjoying the chocolate-scented orchid plant Evan got me for my birthday. Gorgeous flowers--deep maroon, rather star shaped, with a bright yellow outline on all the petals. Four racemes blooming and more coming.
So how do you celebrate spring?
Planting things?
Buying fresh flowers?
Or do you prefer a new-clothes-and-shoes kind of spring celebration?
As soon as I got home, I checked my two long planters to see what had survived the winter and what hadn't. Since it got down to 20 degrees F at the water for several days running, I was expecting total loss.
It wasn't quite that bad.
The patch I reserve for growing herbs--basil, rosemary, two kinds of sage, two kinds of parsley, tarragon, and thyme--had mostly survived. The Italian parsley was toast, as was the tarragon and basil. (Basil hardly ever winters over so that wasn't a surprise. Ditto for tarragon.) The picture isn't my herb garden, but you get the idea....The flower sections of my planters were frozen toast. Absolute carnage. Nothing wintered over, even the bulbs.
So I went to the nursery, bought primroses, petunias, lobelias, a flowering ground cover with cute orange blooms, herbs, and fertilizer.
More than a hundred little plants.
And these are just the low-growers. I've got some tall ones to pick out when they're available--iris, snapdragons, chrysanthemums, roses, big marigolds, dahlias, and whatever else catches my eye in four weeks. One hour a day of stoop labor is all I can take, so I still have a few more of the original hundred plants to put in the ground.
Oh, my aching back. Literally.
Yeah, I'm a wuss.
But in a few months I'll be a wuss with a delicious herb garden and a rainbow of blooms.
Until then, I'm enjoying the chocolate-scented orchid plant Evan got me for my birthday. Gorgeous flowers--deep maroon, rather star shaped, with a bright yellow outline on all the petals. Four racemes blooming and more coming.
So how do you celebrate spring?
Planting things?
Buying fresh flowers?
Or do you prefer a new-clothes-and-shoes kind of spring celebration?
posted at 2:26 PM
