The carpet of snow around the garden makes me finally feel like winter is upon us. It’s strange to have a day where the weather is 60 plus degrees and raining, then experience a sharp decline in the temperature accompanied by light and fluffy snow that sticks. It’s strange, and it’s concerning. One day you walk out of your house in a light rain jacket with no hat or gloves. The next day you need a full on winter coat, hat, gloves, scarf, winter boots, thick socks, the works. A lot of plants in our region go into dormancy over the winter, and when the temperatures spike, they can get “confused.” Lucky for us humans, we have an updated weather forecast that we can reference and can quickly adapt to the changing conditions with our various cold-weather gear. The weather fluctuations are more of an issue for the plants as we’re closer to the approaching spring, or if we have a long stretch of unseasonably warm days. Seeing spent flowers on early spring magnolias before spring has even officially started is a pretty sad sight. Anyway, I’m not sad or thinking about spring premonitions right now, I’m happy. I’m happy about the snow and it feeling more like winter, but I’ll be (and the plants will be) happier with temperatures higher than degrees in the teens. Brrr.
