32\u00a0 bar steep rise 29.79 1pmh SSW dewpoint 30\u00a0 Spring<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 New Moon (Growing)<\/p>\n
Snow!\u00a0 Yes, it happens in April.\u00a0 Even May here sometimes.\u00a0 Even so, at this point it seems like such an insult, a step backward when the engine of solar warming has already taken hold and eliminated most of our snow cover.\u00a0 Yet, even as I write this I don’t mean it.\u00a0 This is the ever present dynamism of our latitude, visible both in the deep cold and dark nights of midwinter, as well as the\u00a0forwards and backwards of early spring.\u00a0 And I would have it no other way.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The plants that show signs of life now, that spear their first leaves up through the oak leaves and straw laid down to keep them cool\u00a0until temperatures even out a bit, they are ready for this, made to achieve height and bloom before their contemporaries.\u00a0 This is an example of what Bill Mollison (author of Permaculture) calls a time niche.\u00a0 Most perennials have specific time niches.\u00a0Part of flower gardening involves learning their niches.\u00a0Only then can you have a garden with blooms throughout the growing season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Daffodils, tulips, bloodroot and\u00a0anemones\u00a0fall into a category roughly named spring ephemerals.\u00a0 Their strategy is to grow, bloom, and begin to die back before the larger, woody plants like trees and shrubs leaf out.\u00a0 That way the spring ephemeral gets light denied to\u00a0those that grow later in the season, light filtered or blocked out entirely by the leaves of maples, oaks, dogwoods and lilacs.\u00a0Ephemeral refers to their time niche and defines them\u00a0as the mum and aster are as fall bloomers.<\/p>\n
I like the spring ephemerals.\u00a0 Their pluck, their hardiness and their almost too obvious metaphorical value regenerate horticultures spirit in me each year.\u00a0 Right outside garden patio door I can see the red leaved tulip plants and the yellow green daffodil leaves.\u00a0 Up from and behind them the iris have already grown as much as six inches.\u00a0 The moss has turned bright green and buds on the dogwood and magnolia have swollen.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At this point I’m always reminded, in an admittedly perverse way, of the Aztec poem that goes something like this:\u00a0 We are here as in a dream between a death and death.\u00a0 I haven’t got it quite right and I can’t find it.\u00a0 The intent though is to say that life is the illusion, that our true existence is in the realm we think of as death, we emerge from it at birth and return to after death.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
32\u00a0 bar steep rise 29.79 1pmh SSW dewpoint 30\u00a0 Spring \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 New Moon (Growing) Snow!\u00a0 Yes, it happens in April.\u00a0 Even May here sometimes.\u00a0 Even so, at this point it seems like such an insult, a step backward when the engine of solar warming has already taken hold and eliminated most of our snow … Continue reading Spring Ephemerals<\/span>