Category: Winter days in Minnesota

It begins 2022

Gardening 2022 has begun here. The daylily seeds have gone in the refrigerator for stratification, and plans for the garden adjustments and potential additions are beginning to take shape. This year the plan is to add pumpkin. Pumpkin (singular) you say? For sure! One 20 something pound pumpkin that will celebrate his first birthday in a few months. One little pumpkin that has diverted his Gramma’s attention just a tiny bit away from garden expansions and Grampa’s attentions as well. For instance, Grampa came to Gramma with a plan to capture rainwater from our new gutters up north into raised bed rain gardens. Oh be still my pitter pattering heart! Less watering concerns? Would that be awesome? More time for growing pumpkin ❤️

More to come. As it takes shape. You know how this goes.

In the meantime, the gardens rest. All of them are still under lots of snow.

Yes, those are squirrel tracks. But that too is a story for a different time.

The little and the simple things

The little and the simple things are what is mattering most to me lately. Going “glamping” at the little house up north for 4 days over New Year’s weekend – with two lawn chairs, carpet remnants, a 50 year old polyurethaned card table, a cooler, and an air mattress. We had so much fun!!!

Seeing the deer tracks through the snow in our small yard for the first time. Taking our dog out before bedtime and walking out to see two deer right there. Driving through changing scenes of thick frost on the trees – in sepia, in green, in blue as the sun hid and then set.

Hearing stories about the well known deer in town. Hearing stories about the apple picking bear in town. Feels very familiar. Maybe there’s a message in there. I just don’t know what it is yet. Grow pine trees? Something will materialize.

Happy Leap Year!

Wow!  February 29!  Spring is around the corner, right?  I hope so.

We filled February with a lot of activities, and the month was fun, but I’m so ready for gardening season.

My daylily seeds are in the refrigerator getting prepped for planting in two weeks.  The days are getting longer, but the snow piles remain.  Still, my shamrocks are back in bloom, and, right on cue, my hibiscus bloomed for the first time this year on February 26th.  How does it do that so consistently?  Soon another bloom will brighten a couple days.

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Outside at our townhome, the sedum I left for the birds fed another as well. Can you tell who else liked it?

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Glad to see it go to good use!

Up north we have ample snow as well – ample as in higher than the bottom of the doors the last time we made a day trip.  But soon the wonder of the thawing woods will arrive.  We’ll see how our fall planted bulbs fare, and if the asclepias and coneflowers made it through the weedy hugelkultur garden and the long winter.  Dare we plant daylily seedlings?  Still undecided.

January

It’s January.  I’m missing my gardens.  I’m missing any gardens.  Off to our local gardening center I went today.  This is a thing I do – wander around, maybe buy a watch ’em grow garden, and maybe something additional.  I suspect, no I know, I am not unique in doing this.

Today I got both.  I could not resist.

The watch ’em grow garden

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And a beautiful cyclamen

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So fun!

I also bought a set of seed pods for when I start my daylily seeds.  Now I’m committed to that because I have all the materials.  I had started down the path of saving toilet paper and paper towel rolls to cut up as soil holders, like last year, but then I saw that the pods are ok for daylilies, so I’m going to try them.  This will be my first year of growing only daylily seedlings.  I had a bumper crop of ‘Just Plum Happy’ daylily seeds last fall, so I’m hoping to get something from those.  Plus a few from our other daylilies.   I’m also hoping this is the year I see flowers on the seedlings from the daylily seeds I planted out in the ground the past couple seasons.

And I’m playing again with the idea of trying to find a way to have daylilies up north.  I know!  How many times will I go back and forth on this?  It’s just that I dream of naturalizing them. I know, however, they are deer yummies, and our trailcams have lots of deer on them.  I have the two (failed hugelkulture) raised bed gardens up there from last year.  I may try a seedling or two in there – from the ‘Just Plum Happy’ abundance.  I could recycle some of my chicken wire from last year here to protect them.  I know – ugly!  We’ll see.  Lots of time to decide.

A quiet season

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It was a quiet holiday season again, something we guard very closely.  We remember the years of frantic shopping, endless activities, everyone cranky because they were exhausted.  We don’t do that anymore, thank goodness!

Our big holiday immediate family meal is Thanksgiving.  We have one extended family gathering as well.  Then we have small gatherings with family and friends, just the way we like it – very personable, very relaxing.  My personal favorite is that the closer we get to Dec 24, the more we slow down.  By the eve of Dec 24 we are tucked in at home, spending time reflecting, being thankful for our salvation, thankful for our provisions, thankful for family and friends and meaningful lives.

It was another peaceful holiday season.  And for that, I am thankful!

 

Heirloom Seeds and the Shamrocks

Yesterday I bought heirloom seeds for our test garden up north – pickling plume lettuce, scarlet kale, asparagus, echinacea, zebrina hollyhock (one of my all time favorites), and some more milkweed.   I’m getting excited to get started.  It feels a bit like old times when I had seed starting trays by our west facing patio door.  I suppose I will start the seeds indoors again, but will wait for a month or so.  My guess is we won’t plant up there until the end of May or even early June.

Yesterday I also did some “indoor gardening” on the shamrocks and the amaryllis.  The shamrocks are the healthiest they have ever looked in March.

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Usually by this time at the end of winter they are very scraggly and I can hardly wait to get get them back outside in April so the birds pluck away all the dried stems in between the live ones and use them for their nests.  This year it may be a bit longer.

The amaryllis did not bloom for the second year in a row.  I suspect I should follow best practices going forward and put it in a dry dark place for a few months.  I am, however, tempted to send it to compost in the spring, along with a leggy succulent.  We’ll see.

 

The Robins Return

Over the past couple days we’ve seen a few more robins in the trees.  Today dozens at a time were flying in.

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Tonight we’re having what is supposed to be the last sub-zero night of this long winter (-6°F).  I hope they were able to tuck into warm places.

Snow is on the way for the weekend, but the temperatures are slowly warming.  Soon we will see kids out wearing shorts on 40°F days!  It’s a sure sign we are all ready for the massive mounds of snow to start melting.

 

 

 

Beautiful day; more snow on the way

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Yesterday was a beautiful sunny day following an almost aqua colored night due to the upcoming super snow moon.  Last night’s sunset, however, told a “not yet” story as clouds rolled in for the 6-10″ of snow we are supposed to get today.  It looks like we are headed into our typical March snow pattern, with big snowfalls followed by slowly increasing temperatures.  It may not feel like it today, but spring is on the way.

Up north, it may take longer.  We hear the snow is waist deep.  But Minnesotans are hearty folk 😉  One gentleman told us he and his wife snowshoed out to grill shrimp on the fire.  We are dreaming of that day!  Maybe next year winter we can do that.

Our daily visitor

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Last summer we had baby cardinals in our green space.  It was so fun to watch Mom and Dad come and get their food, fly to feed the hatchlings, and then we’d hear chirping.  Throughout the winter we have had a pair of cardinals who come to eat early in the day and then again late – about 5pm.  Today they are here again.  So beautiful!  Such a treat!  They are definitely well fed!