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 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!

A comment from Kira on my last post echoes a sentiment I read recently in an article by Tovah Martin in Horticulture Magazine and something I’m feeling the crush of too: we’ve had a long enough break from the garden. Isn’t a month or two around the holidays plenty of time before we start feeling the pull of plants again? That’s why Tovah so smartly forces spring bloomers inside. And that’s why Kira (one of our volunteers, incidentally), Gail and I and probably the entire population of gardeners exiled indoors devour every word in every seed catalog. Starting about now, we cannot wait for spring.

I suspect I’d be more interested in winter – because I usually love it – if last week’s snowfall hadn’t parked on the garden like a Mack truck. My hopes of seedheads poking prettily up through winter snows were laid flat. Now I can almost see now the virtue in cutting everything back in fall because why not? if it isn’t going to add loveliness to our winter view. But I  have to remember it isn’t just for us. The birds don’t care what it looks like, so we’ll keep keeping as much standing for them as we can.

As gloomy as I’m suddenly feeling about winter, if spring really was right around the corner, I’d probably say I wasn’t ready after all. Gail and I still need the time to go through catalogs and attend classes (maybe bee school for me this year) and even though I’m no good at waiting (a whole week between Downton Abbey episodes makes me crazy) I know that anticipation will sweeten spring’s arrival. Meanwhile there’s nothing to do for it but to go out and find the pretty in winter and practice Zen-like patience. I’m glad to report that it was easier than I thought it would be to enjoy winter this morning as the fog lifted off the snow. Even tipped over and smashed, the garden was as pretty as I could ever hope it would be.

Is the wait of winter weighing heavily on you – or your garden – too?