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Lydia, our Irish Terrier leaps around the garden enjoying the new snowfall as a Hamamellis x intermedia blooms, heavy with wet, spring snow. This shrub was already weakened from being covered with a thick,heavy snow from our unseasonable October blizzard, which dumped 30 inches on the garden while many plants were still in full-leaf. Many trees and shrubs are still damaged from the October storm, and have yet to recover their form after a summers worth of new growth. |
It’s been snowing for 24 hours here in Worcester, Massachusetts, which, in normal years would be no big deal, but because our winter here in the north east having been so mild, national media has swept in, and we awoke to Good Morning America broadcasting from our town common, with astonished reporters yakking about our incredible our 6 inches of snow on March 1st has been. Of course, last year we had nearly 80 inches of snow by this time, and the media had run out of any interest for our plight. Still, the snow is welcome, if only for a day or two, after all – this is the first significantly measurable snow since October, when we had 30 inches the week before Halloween. Winter this year, has indeed, come in like a lion, and out like one too – but the in-between has been very lamby.
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| A Polemonium species blooms in the warmth of the planted, alpine stone wall, where it self-seeded. On Sunday, it bloomed welcoming honey bees to a special treat in February. It’s always interesting how one, tiny speck of blueish violet stands out from the entire garden, when it is February and when everything else is grey. |
This year obviously has been about as ‘un-seasonable’ as it gets, with off-season record breaking blizzards, and garden plants blooming in January and February, but I do remember years past, when I’ve had hellebores in bloom in January, and witch hazels in bloom even earlier than this year, but these events come along every ten or twenty years it seems.
It's amazing where plants choose to grow! Is that a polemonium or pulmonaria? Hard to tell but I know pulmonarias are tough plants.