I’ve done a lot of grousing about March lately. And it’s almost as if she heard me and said “Oh yeah? You think I’m a drag? I’ll show you how awesome I can be!” Over the last couple of days, the weather has been beyond gorgeous. Quite a few visitors have taken advantage of bright beautiful days to wander the grounds. — But not all of the visitors, at least yesterday, were human. I’ve seen turkeys on the property before but never actual birds with feathers, wattles and all. A skittish trio strutted and lurched across the front lawn right in front of my camera. It looked like a female and 2 males – would that be a happy family or a hot chick with suitors? (My clearest shots only captured a pair – I think it was the female who stayed out of the frame.)

I’m usually on vacation in early March so I can’t tell from my stack of calendars/garden journals, but I have a memory – some vivid memories actually – of really awful weather right about now in recent years. (I know for sure that it was cold and rainy on the 8th two years ago. — Rain makes the knot tighter.) If I go by pictures, last year I took my first shots of skunk cabbage on the 13th. Either I was late spotting them or the skunk cabbage and crocus are early this year. By the looks of some of the skunk cabbage blooms, they may have been up for a while already. Anyone else keeping better track?

Skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) is probably not my romantic ideal of a native wildflower but it is a fascinating creature. I didn’t know (before looking it up on the internet) that the flower, which is a spadix inside a spathe hood, produces heat. It’s one way of attracting pollinators – the other way being a foul odor (I did know about that). The heat they produce is also useful for busting through frozen ground earlier than almost anything else.  Today’s pollinators were honeybees – I’m not sure I’d just love the taste of skunk cabbage honey but the bees will take what they can get this time of year and skunk cabbage knows it. Another fascinating thing is that the roots grow and then contract like muscles pulling the plant ever deeper into the ground. The older the plant the more deeply embedded. The pointy bud that shows alongside the bloom spathe, and should have been showing actually since the fall (though I never noticed it), is a spiral of leaves that will unfurl as the flowers wilt. To see skunk cabbage in action, look around swampy areas – most of ours are down by the water garden. It’s an eye test – all but the most solidly burgundy-colored are well camouflaged right now in the dapple and leaf debris.

Have these last few days been better than average in your garden too?

I didn’t think that I’d do a bloom day post this month. I’m a day late and there’s another slushy winter storm-let blowing around outside. But then I walked into the greenhouse, which smells so heavenly that there was no way I could ignore the blooms. I walked in and thought, “I could do a whole post on Kalanchoes.” (Even though they’re not fragrant.) They’re just starting to open and it would be good for me to do a little research again to figure out just what we have. (There are only about a gajillion of these things and probably half of them, including these have been given a new name by now. – There’s another post topic…) I took a guess on their names from a quick peruse of the b&w photos in our enormous, moldy, vintage copy of Exotica 3: Pictorial Cyclopedia of Exotic Plants by A.B. Graf. Please let me know if my guesses are wrong – or if they might have been right in 1963.

And then I walked around the corner and thought, “I could do a whole post on Sweet olive.” I’d like to figure out why ours always looks so beat. I know Osmanthus fragrans don’t love to be fertilized, so we haven’t tormented it that way in a while. But I think it looked better last winter when I really made an effort to let it dry out between watering. Apparently this year I had trouble shifting gears for proper winter culture… Regardless of how it looks, it smells divine and sometimes (right now) that’s really the most important thing.

What really deserves its own post is the Gunnera tinctoria. I guess none of the horror-show growth on this thing is a flower so it hardly counts for bloom day. Whatever, right? New leaves are just starting to emerge and they have such a bizzaro look to them that I’m just as captivated as if it had me pinned on its spikes. I’m not sure what the swirly whirl of pinkish tinged … tentacles are. Leaves? Bracts? And what is the red… oozing … finger-like thing?? Is it a root or rhyzome in search of soil? I know it’s not a flower part because my books say the flowers are born on tall panicles (can’t wait for that!) It’s probably a good thing that gunnera isn’t hardy here or I’d be tempted to tear down my house to make room for one in my garden. (What use is a house to a gardener anyway?) Does anyone grow this plant or can any of you shed some light on the meaning of these parts?

Thanks, as always to Carol from May Dreams Gardens for hosting Garden Bloggers Bloom Day every month on the 15th. Click on the link for a look at what’s in bloom around the world. Since it’s the 16th, and the Gunnera is all about foliage, I’m going to cheat and join Foliage Follow-Up at Digging too. Thanks, Pam!

I have had a particularly hard time letting go of summer this year and submitting to the possibility of winter. Perhaps my difficulty is rooted in the fact that summer itself seems reluctant to put its hands all the way up in the air in that universal gesture of You’ve-Got-Me. There’s still a spark. Even though we’ve had snow (which we all know = winter), and the dark morning and bitter cold wind made it impossible to get a clear shot of this Astrantia major, the point is, fergoshsakes, the Astrantia is blooming! Come on. It’s most certainly not July anymore but the Kniphofia still refuse to keel over and yesterday Gail rescued a praying mantis, of all things, from the rock wall. It’s December.

(Gail debated about bringing the mantis in. Always looking on the bright side though, she figured that it would die either way, and this way she’d gain a specimen for her collection.)

I give up. I’m following the mantis indoors. The temperatures have taken a wicked nose-dive this morning and we have just about finished outside anyway – the leaves are shredded, the dahlias are out of the ground (and in storage) and the gardens are cut back. We only have to go back out to trim down the whips on the roses but since they’re still blooming, we’ll wait a little longer before doing that. In a way – in lots of ways – I’m glad to go in and stay in. The greenhouse beckons.

Is your garden still showing any signs of a stubborn summer?

Take a pretty close look right about now and you’ll see it everywhere – spring is just poking it’s head out of the ground.  The daffodils are 4 or 5 inches tall in some places, the crocuses were up this morning and probably open by now and one of the more bizarre wildflowers – the skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) is suddenly snout out.  A few of the tulips in the Rose Garden are even showing some serious leaf – I hope the deer don’t notice…

And in the greenhouse spring is poking out of packs and our new coir pots — we switched to coir fiber pots from peat for a couple of reasons:  Coir is a renewable resource (coconut husk) whereas peat is not – peat sources are definitely dwindling.  Also the peat pots don’t break down quickly enough to even throw away in our compost and we’ve been told that the coir pots break down so fast we can actually plant them.  I’ll keep you posted about how we like them.

Gail and a few volunteers did a bunch of seeding last week while I was away and I thought I’d share their list of accomplishments with you really so that I could have a better idea of who’s who on the benches.  Many of the seeds have already germinated because we had a 3-4 day stretch of sun and heat after sowing – for some seeds that’s all it takes.  – By the way, the sweet peas Gail and I sowed with our no-soak method on February 24th, germinated in about a week .

Warning – this is a long list in no particular order (aside from the date).

March 4th:  pennyroyal, hollyhock, Rudbeckia, Asperula, parsley, Viola, Salvia, Eryngium, Centranthemum, kale, cabbage, lettuce, Phystostegia, Lysimachia, statice, artichoke, dahlia, petunia, Swiss chard.

March 6th:  Artichoke, Eryngium, leeks, Orlaya, Calendula, Dicranostigma, Asclepias, dahlia, kale, cabbage, Aquilegia.

and this week, March 11th:  beets, California poppy, lettuce, creeping zinnia, annual Phlox, Nicotiana, Ipomopsis, fountain grass, Gomphrena, pink paintbrush grass, Asclepias, Salvia.

We do start things early because of having the greenhouse but even if all you have is a sunny windowsill, artichokes could be/should be started now because the seedlings need at least a 2 week period of cold (no warmer than 50 degrees, but not freezing) after germination in order to produce flowers the first year.

If you have any questions about the list – if want more details about anything in particular, please let me know.  Have you seen spring emerging?  Have you started any seeds?

The entire horticultural staff went to the first of our winter conferences this week.  I can really only speak for myself, but I think we get a lot out of these outings.  Not only did we get to pal around with Layanee from Ledge and Gardens and learn scary things about Emerald Ash Borer and Asian Longhorn Beetles but we had the pleasure of listening to Sydney Eddison give her Gardens to Go: Creating and Designing a Container Garden talk and slide show.  We already have a well worn and dogeared copy of the book on the potting shed shelf and it’s one that Gail and I each have at home too.  And even though we refer to the book annually for container bed ideas as well as for new furniture colors every so often, hearing Ms. Eddison talk about her process was like seeing the photographs (by Steve Silk) of her garden for the first time.

She talked about borrowing from her experience as a set designer when she designed her patio container garden and it was like a little light went on in my head.  Of course a garden must have an entrance that entices you in and even doors themselves are important elements in the garden.   You never know who might walk through so she says to make sure to allow for and embellish that mystery.   Frames are very important in sets and gardens because they help draw the eye to vignettes and vistas.   And the flow of movement in a garden is as important as on a stage.  You certainly don’t want the ingenue (especially if that’s you) to trip over any of the props.

A fresh perspective calls for a fresh perspective and I learned this picture trick from Sydney Eddison’s partner in publishing, her favorite garden photographer, Steve Silk.  “Tilt Shift” is a photo editing technique (click here for a Photoshop tutorial or here for a web editor) that somehow magically transforms the view from life size to itty-bitty-teeny-tiny.  It’s like creating a mini model mock-up of the garden complete with flocking grass and paper trees.  (Be careful if you try it.  It’s a little addictive.)

Are you finding any new perspectives on your garden?