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?

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?

More changes are afoot in the potting shed than just a remodel and reorganization. We are entering the modern age finally and ordering seeds on line rather than sending them off by mail. But even though we’ve decided to embrace technology for the sake of faster gratification than waiting for checks to be issued and the mail sent both ways, I still think reading a paper catalog is easier and more fun than staring at web pages. –That said, I can understand why some plant and seed companies have gone entirely on line and I applaud them for not wasting trees, ink, and postage on me when clearly the world is moving away from those things. So for however long it takes for the rest of us to prefer the feeling of an e-reader in our paws rather than a bound book, paper catalogs will have a welcome place on my lap.

Last year I placed our first order (in my time) with Chiltern Seeds in England. I searched on line for what we wanted — certain grasses and sweet peas that weren’t available through our usual sources — and was only mildly annoyed when some of their plants were listed without pictures. After all, a google images search is only a tab away. But this year they sent us a paper catalog. At first I was overwhelmed by it because the skinny onion-skin pages hold 4000+ plant descriptions, all but 9 without pictures! But after flicking through quickly, I started reading from the beginning and found the reward: tucked here and there amongst perfectly illustrative descriptions is humor, personality, and interesting information.

I learned that Dispsacus fullonum, which I have been calling Fuller’s teasel (because that’s what its species name implies) is in fact “common teasel”. The teasel actually used by fullers to card wool is Dipsacus sativus, whose dried flower heads “are a miracle of nature” with ” hundreds of tiny, stiff, downward-turned hooks amazingly and geometrically arranged.”  The description of Eryngium planum ‘Blue Glitter’ made me nod and snort because “the writer likes this one!” and after calling the flower heads “innumerable,” he actually counted 85 on the stem on his desk. I never noticed before that Silphium lacinatum orients its leaves to the poles. (I also didn’t know it’s called compass plant, pilot weed, and polar plant.) So cool. And I loved that towards the end the writer looked like he was getting a little punchy. The description for Viola ‘Cats’ begins,

“It is no secret that the writer likes his cats: as he pens these words, there’s a white porcelain cat glowering down at him from the mantlepiece warning him against making purrfectly awful puns about purrfect faces or even suggesting having a purr of these lovely Pansies in pots outside your front door. So he won’t!”

Like turning the last page of a good book, I was a little sad to finish that catalog. But we placed a big order and have a whole season of our own opinions about those plants – mostly sweet peas and primroses – to look forward to.

Do you still read plant and seed catalogs cover to cover? Do you have a favorite?

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 don’t really expect much to be blooming outside in the middle of January but I also don’t expect it to be pushing 60°. A January thaw would seem more justified if the weeks leading to it had been frigid rather than merely gray, raw, and windy. But any time the air is soft and the bay is like a mirror, you won’t catch me complaining. You’ll catch me outside. The bees took advantage of yesterday’s warmth to look for flowers, so I figured I might as well look for some too. I didn’t find much though and what I did find was not covered in a swarm. …I wonder where the bees went and hope to learn more about their moves in bee school…

(click on pictures for a bigger view or mouse over for the caption.) 

While the bees did whatever they were out doing, I followed the sun around the Display Garden and cut back some of the completely fallen down stalks that were no longer contributing to the view. It was work that could have waited for the same kind of day in February or March, but didn’t have to. I left some stems as protection over the crown of certain plants like Salvia guaranitica and anise hyssop and just tidied them up a bit instead (cut them back by half or so). The betony (Stachys officinalis ‘Hummelo’) stalks broke off at the ground with barely any tugging as did all the fallen butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa) so clearly, it was time for them to be compost. I also decided to whack back most of our Pennisetum orientale ‘Karley Rose’. Is it just me or is that grass a beast with few redeeming qualities? It definitely didn’t hold my winter interest and flopped around a little too much over the summer at least where we had it (smack in the middle of the pollinator bed path. I freely admit that was my bad idea. Maybe I’ll like it better somewhere else. Then again, maybe not. Live and learn.)

Have you had the chance to get outside during a balmy thaw yet? What did you do? – Anything blooming? For a world-wide look at January blooms, head over to May Dreams Gardens for Garden Bloggers Bloom Day!