It seems like just a day or two ago, but ten days ago I divided my 'King Tut' papyrus. It had been in the garage for a couple of months, and I was afraid that I had waited too long to bring a division inside under the lights.
There is nobody who puts out the spring gardening supplies around here earlier than the big box home improvement stores, which in St. Louis are Lowes and Home Depot. I was at HD today to pick up some paint and other stuff not related to gardening, then remembered that I needed a couple of small clay saucers to put under the green onion pots. Glad I did, because as I made my way over to the indoor part of the garden department it looked like they had just rolled out the Burpee seed packet display earlier today.
I received those bamboo rhizomes the other day and I've got some plant cuttings rooted in water that I've been meaning to get into some soil, and since the temperature outside is about the same as the temperature in the garage (low to mid 40's F) it seems like the perfect day to do some potting. Yes, I could pot these up in the garage any day, but it's much nicer and simpler if I can leave the garage door open for more light and easier access to pots that I left outside this winter.
When winter starts getting to me, there are a few things I can do. 1) I can go to my growing table in the basement and get a fix of green. This often reminds me of work I need to do though, as some of the plants on the table need some attention. 2) I can browse my gardening books and seed catalogs, dreaming, planning, and counting the days until the last frost date. 3) I can go through my old garden photos, reminding myself what the yard will look like again in just a few months, when it warms. (It's surprising how quickly I forget each year!)
For those of us gardeners who have been bitten by the bamboo bug, late winter is an exciting time as it marks the start of the bamboo trading season. (Yes I know it's not actually late winter yet here, but it can be for growers in warmer climates.) It's the best time to dig up rhizomes -- the parts of the plant that are underground and will produce new shoots in a few months. For those of us who grow running bamboo, some method of controlling the spread of these rhizomes is needed, and digging them up before the new shoots are produced is a good way to do this.
Do you remember the finch nest on my front porch? It was built in April, used to raise some chicks, then used again in May to rear a second brood. By the time that last chick took flight, the nest was looking pretty sad -- it had quite a bit of bird "droppings" on it and around it. Once the last chick left I waited a while to see if the nest would be used again, but it wasn't, so I could have cleaned it up at that time.
Sometime over the last 10 years or so, owls have moved into our neighborhood. Maybe they've always been here, but before then I wasn't paying enough attention to the natural world around me, but I don't think so. I've always been quite observant of nature, so I think it's more just a matter of getting enough "good" trees around here -- trees that owls would find attractive to nest in.
I've written about various small-plant gardens before, collections of different colors and textures hugging the ground. Perhaps different species of thymes, or a collection of sedums (or better yet, a mixture of the two). Even mosses or lichens can create a wonderful small-scale garden under the right conditions.
At least I hope they do, because today I sprayed them. If you missed it, yesterday I wrote about the aphids on some of my overwintering indoor plants, and took a good close look at them.
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