Another heavy, wet snow is coming at us sideways today. I don’t mean to whine (yes I do!) but we’ve had just about enough of that this winter. And it has taken its toll all over the property. The other day I took a walk through our bamboo grove (yellow groove – Phyllostachys aureosulcata). It usually pops back up after a snowfall. Not this year. Each snowfall landed like another ton of bricks. But I’m inclined to find the damage beautiful – like an art installation – because I know the grove will recover. The broken culms will have to be cut out, and the grove roped off while new shoots rise in May and June, but soon enough – maybe even by this summer, it will be hard to tell it was ever so smashed. (Click on pictures for a bigger view.)

Did winter make any sculptures in your garden?

Right at the cusp of a season full of overwhelming delights, I discovered a teeny-tiny one. It’s a very small thing but for me, it was kind of huge. Ever since I found out that Aspidistra elatior, the famously boring Victorian houseplant, also known as cast-iron plant, has a flower, I’ve wanted to see it for myself. But I was never sure of the timing, and most days poor Uncle is way off my radar. It hardly ever even wants watering, for goodness sake. So just try to imagine the moment when I went to evict a pair from their pots (to use the containers in a Christmas display), and noticed the flowers! Picture me, all alone in the greenhouse, doing a little dance.

The flowers, right at soil level and mostly such a dark purple they practically match the soil, are completely incognito. Also since they open so close to the surface, the flower cups were full of bits of soil and perlite. It’s really no wonder I’ve been missing them all these years. But they’re so pretty. And while you might think that I’d leave them be and find a different pair of pots, I wanted a closer look at their full structure. (Click on pictures for a closer look yourself.)

I understand that this particular delight might not provide the same kind of thrill for anyone else but if you happen to visit the greenhouse – or for that matter wherever your travels take you throughout the holidays, I offer you the challenge of finding at least one small surprise to be delighted by. Maybe it will be these very same flowers…

Yesterday working in the Rose Garden one of our diligent volunteer weeders gave us a rare opportunity to check out some flowers that were never meant to be noticed. As the gardens continue to explode with blooms of every color, size and shape, and attract pollinators of every walk, fly, creep and crawl of life, some plants like these violas (which to us are only weeds if they’re in the wrong spot) are working overtime to produce closed, “cleistogamous”, self-pollinating flowers instead. Nature is weird.

Evidently, violas find their springtime pollinators so unreliable that they developed a last ditch survival mechanism: DIY pollination. It’s a terrible method for promoting genetic diversity – species are better off using “chasmogamous” or opening flowers to cross-pollinate – better yet, for a plant to reject its own pollen in favor of that from another – and change with the times. But survival is survival say the violas, the fittest be damned. We couldn’t help dissecting a couple of the flowers to check out the parts inside but would have needed a microscope or at least a loupe to identify anything. The ripening seeds were visible enough. I’ve never witnessed this but when they’re fully ripe and ready to go, they’re ejected like toast from the pod. Nature is cool.

Violas aren’t the only plant with a backup plan. Jewelweed (Impatiens capensis) does the same thing – though I couldn’t find any of its cleistogamous flowers. And I got kind of excited thinking that perhaps these pale green pouches (below, right) on the wooly morning glory (Argyreia nervosa) are its flowers because I’ve never seen them open further. But according to Google images, the buds inside eventually do open into chasmogamous flowers that are quite attractive – to my eye and probably to pollinators as well. Learn something new everyday.

The other day friend of mine and Blithewold’s left a bag full of these delicious looking things on my desk with a note suggesting they might make a good blog post. Indeed. I’ve never seen them before and I never can resist finding out more about weird things whether they show up on my desk or not.

They are azalea leaf and flower galls caused by a fungus amongus named Exobasidium vaccinii. It’s a weather-related blight probably brought on by our warm winter and wet late-spring into summer, that turns infected leaf and flower tissue into fleshy aliens. It affects azaleas, rhododendrons and camellias but isn’t usually life-threatening. Just ugly. Treatment involves nothing more than cutting them off the shrubs as my friend did and burying them or burning them. (Leaving them on someone’s desk as a novelty is an optional middle step.) And it’s best to catch the galls before they turn dusty white with spores or into gray knobs that indicate they’ve done their business.

They are called Pinkster apples because the Pinkster (or Pinxter or Pink) azalea (Rhodendron periclymenoides) is particularly susceptible and galls on its flowers turn pinkish. And in case you thought I was kidding about them looking delicious, I was and wasn’t. Some sources (including my own pinkster apple source) say that they’re a delicacy. But I can’t find any recipes to try, only warnings about how rhodies, especially the leaves, are poisonous.

I took a quick walk around to check out Blithewold’s rhododendrons and azaleas and didn’t spot any signs but judging by the contents of the bag, it may be a problem this year for other gardeners. Have you ever spotted anything like this on your azaleas? (Do you have a recipe for them?)

It’s still January for at least for another day or so, but it looks strangely an awful lot like mid-February – or even March here and there, and feels about the same. My brain thinks that means that May is right around the corner. But it isn’t. Not by a long shot. We can’t have seen the end of winter yet.

It’s hard to keep from speculating about spring and summer. Will the pendulum swing? Will we get dumped on by an April blizzard? Will summer be miserably chilly? All we can be sure of is that the weather is weird and will probably continue to be so from here on in. I think I can’t remember anymore what normal feels like anyway.

And who knows what the plants are thinking. My guess is that plants that hate wet winter feet are hating having wet feet. We’ve had more rain and less snow than we’re used to and the ground is only staying frozen – just barely – in the shade.

Anything that is blooming early isn’t likely to come into bloom again at the proper time so with any luck their pollinators are taking advantage of the warmish weather too. Selfishly, I can’t help but be a little disappointed about premature blooms because some flowers are easily wrecked by temperature swings and don’t look quite as outstanding as they otherwise could.

But it is what it is and the only thing to do is go in search of the tease and enjoy its pull towards spring. I know it’s way too early for bloom day too but what haven’t you had to wait for in your garden?