Given that I lost patience with winter way back in December, I’m pretty excited to notice that despite weekly storms and another overnight icing of a wintery mix, spring is starting to win the tug of war. When the sun is out – and the wind isn’t blowing a gale – it’s warm enough to bask a little. Everything is dripping, the ground is squishy, and the birds are singing love songs. Looks at least partly springy out to me. I know I’m probably jumping the gun a little because March is usually disappointingly March-like but I can’t help it. I’m just so ready to see spring in the smallest signs.

The biggest sign of spring is easy enough to see – and feel: the sun is finally high enough in the sky that the greenhouse is getting cooking. By mid-morning on a sunny day over the last couple of weeks it has become so deliciously summer-like in there we have had to strip off sweaters and scarves and squint or put on sunglasses. The plants are responding to the extra light and heat by outgrowing containers, blooming away, and becoming susceptible to infestations. – Aphids and whitefly seem to love spring as much as I do. So we and a handful of volunteers have started taking sunny opportunities to keep up with the grooming and leaf washing. (We’ll try to rotate all the garden volunteers in for a vitamin-D fix.) I have followed the sunbeams around my house to do the same thing… And today Gail and I started emptying benches to make room for more plants because we’ll start some seeds this week. If that isn’t a sure sign of spring, I don’t know what is.

Missing February bloom day is my excuse for posting some gratuitous sunny greenhouse flowers (clockwise from top left): Everyone thinks this camellia (unnamed) is a double hibiscus – it’s that tropical looking. Amaryllis ‘Zombie’ has been on a blooming rampage since December. The blue Marguerite (Felicia amelloides ‘Variegata’) is also unstoppable, and completely unbothered by insects. And even though the Spanish shawl (Centradenia floribunda) will quit blooming by summer it’s worth every inch of its bench space for the flowers now.

Is it partly springy in your garden yet? Are your houseplants going nuts? When will you start your first seeds?

I wouldn’t want to alarm anyone who hasn’t been glued to the news but word is we’re in for a “potentially historic” blizzard. I’m just barely old enough to remember the infamous Blizzard of ’78 that buried this part of New England in deep drifts and stranded for days everyone who thought the forecasters were talking Jive. No one wants a repeat of that. Not even close. So Blithewold’s hatches have been battened and we’ve all gone safely (I hope) home to wait it out.

The snow had just started when I took these pictures this morning and it’s been falling steadily – if not heavily – since and it’s a bit breezy. But RI is already under a state of emergency so I guess worse weather than this (which I think already qualifies for pjs, slippers and cocoa) is expected. They’re saying 16-24″ for most of the state. Yikes mikes. I hope everyone in the path of this stays as safe and warm as the plants in the greenhouse look and as I feel right now.

Did anyone else hear Punxsutawney Phil’s Groundhog Day prediction as a rallying cry? If spring is truly right around the corner, we’d better get busy. That said, any of Phil’s kin living in my backyard would have nipped back to the burrow for a longer winter… But I’m not inclined to procrastinate winter work – just in case – and I’d always rather think spring will come sooner than later anyhow. So we’re checking our tool inventory to make sure we’re prepared to dig in, counting our incoming seed packets, and getting our plants ready too.

Although it seems too soon to say it, I think the light has begun to change. The sun is noticeably higher in the sky and even though the air temperature is wicked cold, the sun at least makes it look warmish outside. And it’s definitely warmer inside. The greenhouses are getting into the 60′s and 70′s and the plants are loving it so much that it’s time to cut them back.

Cutting our tender perennials (the salvias, stachytarpheta, heliotrope, African blue basil, cupheas, fuchsias, and plectranthus to name most of our favorites) back now to a low framework — some 12″ from the pot or less depending on the size of the plants — will give them a chance to push out fresh bushy growth well before they go in the ground in May. And I hope they’ll look less naked for our official opening days in April than they would if we waited another couple of weeks. (Meanwhile, don’t forget, the grounds and greenhouse are still actually open to the public.) There are one or two other benefits to cutting back now: when we lop off the tenderest new growth we evict the worst of the aphid and whitefly infestations without having to spray insecticidal soap or neem oil concoctions — which we resist doing when the sun’s out because the leaves can so easily burn. And any tips that aren’t infested can go straight into the cutting bench for more, more, more.

Outside, Nature has been helping with the winter pruning. The sun is suddenly shining in the bamboo grove classroom, which was opened to the sky when half of a huge Norway maple came down in last week’s blow. No doubt the grove will recover when the new shoots shoot up in May/June, though the rest of the busted tree will have to come down at some point.

Are you working hard to prepare for spring? Has Nature been “helpful” in your garden too this winter?

Maybe it has something to do with the spareness of the January landscape (particularly when it’s a clean white and sky-blue); or maybe it’s because there’s little to distract us outside when the wind is blowing a gale and the temperature is toe nippingly frigid; or maybe because we’re still in a New Year’s resolution frame of mind; or maybe for all of those reasons combined and a few more I haven’t thought of, January seems to be the time to focus on getting organized. Time to clear the physical and mental clutter of the year (or years as the case may be) and start fresh.

Gail and I usually spend the month focused on organizing our seed orders and making wish lists and plans for the gardens. But this year we’re also tackling our work space in a way that we haven’t gotten to in recent years. Not to this extent anyway. In the past we (mostly Gail) have gone through the closet, cleared accumulated paperwork off flat surfaces and even made attempts at tidying the cellar. That in particular seemed an impossible task to both of us. (Mostly me.) I wish I had before pictures because it was pretty scary down there with debris that had become so elderly we (I) began to think it must be part of the archival collection. Broken hoses, soil turned to dust, endless mismatched trays, buckets, old labels for long dead plants, and a lattice work of cobwebs, enormous black crevice-dwelling spiders, the occasional bat, and a frog… All (aside from the critters but including our stored dahlia tubers) in great jumbles on a couple of rickety old benches and the floor.

Huge thanks go to Fred, Dan, and Nick who spent part of last week down there clearing out and setting up brilliant, super sturdy shelves along each wall. Suddenly we have a whole new uncluttered, uncreepy, and perfectly functional cellar storage area. A place for everything and everything in its place, as my grandmother used to say. It’s twice the size it was before, easy. Applause, applause!

That frees us up to rethink how we organize the potting shed, which has to function as our office, a volunteer break room, as well as our soil mixing, potting up, and seed starting area (what it was originally intended for). Now that we can store more supplies downstairs, we’re giving some thought to dismantling these cubbies (left) to open up the room for a more gracious break table and supplemental work surface. But we’re still on the fence about that – a little sentimental about the cubbies because they’re so much a part of the building’s antique charm. But whatever we decide, it’s beginning to feel like a New Year in here already.

Have you turned inward too to organize and tidy up this winter? (Gail has been working on her own cellar and I’ve been trying to reshelve mental clutter…)

I can’t imagine any other plant that embodies the abundance and exuberant excess of the holidays quite like a Schlumbergera. Blithewold’s recently gifted Thanksgiving/Christmas cactus in particular maybe — though I did hear that it was a good year for Schlumbergera all around. My two at home bloomed their little arms off too – but not like this one. It’s been going non-stop since our first Friday Sparkle right after Thanksgiving and shows no signs of quitting. And every Friday, as it stops visitors in their tracks, they’ve asked me and Gail the age-old questions of why theirs isn’t blooming/why it does some years and not others/why one plant will bloom while another doesn’t?

We all know they are day-length sensitive, needing a period of darkness to set their buds. But this does not mean they should be locked in a closet for weeks at a time. Bad idea, actually, to deprive them of daylight altogether like that. Better to give them natural nights, at least 13 hours long, unpolluted by lamplight. (I use that advice as a good excuse to go to bed at a reasonable hour.)

They also need cool nights in combination with long ones and that right there might be why some refuse to bloom. As soon as we turn the heat on in the house — unless we program the thermostat for night dips into the 50s — our modern, efficient, weather-sealed houses may be too evenly modulated to toggle the temperature trigger. Leaving plants outside at least until the forecast threatens dips into the 40s will probably give them the requisite weeks of cool, dark nights.

Although my favorite tropical plant reference book, the weighty Exotica by A. F. Graf, recommends temperatures that swing only down into the low 60s, we have used this Christmas cactus to decorate the “cold” end greenhouse where night temps dip into the 40s, and I would bet that’s partly why it has held its blooms so long. As if its been preserved in the refrigerator. By contrast, my plants at home, after the first and fast glorious bloom, dropped most of their follow-up buds. It could be they’re too warm but also maybe too wet. Although the soil shouldn’t be allowed to completely dry out, it shouldn’t stay overly moist either, especially through the winter.

The schlumbergera’s popularity among even non-gardeners belies their evident finickiness and difficulty as houseplants. If they didn’t bloom more often than not and survive for years to outgrow their holiday pedestals and mantels, they wouldn’t have become the passalong favorites that they are.

Can you count on yours to bloom for the holidays? Does it stay in bloom for ages too — or at least for the 12 days of Christmas? What’s your secret of success?