Down, but not out

Last month I posted about one non-hardy plant that I had forgotten about and left out through a couple of freezes: my jasmine. My fix in that post was to prune the plant hard and hope that it would send out new growth. For the past several weeks I've been thinking that I took the wrong approach:

I certainly managed to turn it into a pot full of sharp, leg-poking branches.

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Forgotten, the first

In all of my recent preparations for the arriving cold weather -- moving plants into the greenhouse and garage, covering plants with plastic, saving divisions and cuttings -- I've somehow managed to forget a couple of plants. Yesterday I looked up at the deck stairs as I walked past and among the pots of now-dead annuals this one jumped out as if it were spotlighted:

My jasmine! It's definitely not cold-hardy, and I thought it was unable to take temperatures below freezing.

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Jasmine

Each morning as I go out onto the deck and start down the stairs, I walk into what seems like a wall of sweetly perfumed air, thanks to a single plant. Toward the  bottom of the stairs is my smallish jasmine plant.

I bought it in February a few years ago, when visiting a nearby nursery that keeps greenhouses open all winter long (mainly to sell houseplants). I smelled a jasmine that was in flower and had to have it.

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