Wednesday, March 11, 2009

The Big Chill


Yesterday, it was warm and foggy with water gurgling down the ravines and male yellow shafted flickers were fanning their wings and playing peek-a-boo with the female flickers, high in the treetops. The temperature has now dropped forty degrees overnight; the creeks and ground have re-frozen, and all is quiet and cold. The snowdrops have wrapped their petals so tightly, I fear they will break, and have laid the flowers almost on the ground, each pointing south, like little wind vanes as the arctic high pressure blows clouds, leaves, and little snowdrop flowers before it.
But soon the wind will shift around to the south, and with the sun high in the sky, spring will return... not soon enough, but soon.

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Comments:
Iowa sucks! Just kidding...I'm in Kansas City, so I can't give you too much crap about your climate.
I've been visiting your blog quite a bit, as you seem to have a gorgeous garden in a relatively inhospitable place, and it gives me a little hope that beauty and elegance are possible here in the flat middle.
 
Don,
The few stands of snowdrops we have up so far aren't looking very happy today either. With the cold tonight, I hope they don't break either. Let's hope this is not another one of those YO-YO springs like we've had in the past several years... we're still mourning the loss of over a hundred tulips last year!
 
I saw your wonderful 2008 double blood root photo. I'm wanting to know how you achieved the details in their petals.
Mine are just now opening and I cannot seem to show the veins as well as he have. Thanks!
 
Eukaryote... your winters are certainly milder than ours, for which I'm jealous.

IVG... Wow, what happened to your tulips? It looks like we are finally going to warm up.

Mernie... last spring I bought a really good macro closeup lens, but its field of focus is so shallow it's tricky to use.
Don
 
Don,
The year before last when we lost the big fritillarias, the tulips were severely damaged because they came up too soon and then we had that 3 wks of sub-freezing weather ... to the point that they bloomed lying on the ground. Last year a bunch didn't come back at all and those that did hardly bloomed. And they were all Darwins! We just didn't have the heart or energy to plant more last fall, and just put in several hundred crocus instead...
 
Don, thanks for your help.
I'll look into acquiring a macro lens for my camera.
 
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