Not much to report this winter. After a long stretch of mild weather, we’re near the end of a cold spell, with clear skies and nighttime temperatures in the mid 20s F. I’ve chosen not to cover any garden plants with tarps. A little colder and some of them would need it, but they should come through with minor damage to the branch tips on the olives (Olea europaea) and maybe some withered foliage on the Australian tea trees (Melaleuca alternifolia). Hopefully. Time will tell. The longer the cold spell, the greater the damage.
Fraser Valley in British Columbia usually gets mentioned by weather forecasters when one of these cold fronts blows down from the arctic regions. Sometimes, when conditions are just right, the arctic air from further north in Canada comes roaring through the Fraser Valley and stalls over the Puget Sound region for a few days or weeks. Very rarely it gets into the teens, and when it does, that is bad news. Plants that seem to have made it safely to young adulthood can die or at least die back to the roots. The Medicinal Herb Garden lost two mature (as in five feet tall and five feet wide) yerba mate bushes (Ilex paraguariensis) at the same time several young olive trees were killed to the roots (they’ve since grown back) more than a decade ago. Summers are getting warmer but our latitude works against us in winter. Yes, the buffering effects of the Puget Sound and the Pacific Ocean currents protect us from the colder interior air…most of the time, until a cold spell pushes its way down from the north. To varying degrees, it happens pretty much every winter. At least the days have been sunny…
…and sometimes snowy. We got our second snow of the season Wednesday night, just enough to cover the ground but not enough to shut down our steeply hilly city. That’s a Sichuan pepper tree (Zanthoxylum simulans) next to section C.
New snow is the garden’s best guest register. No sign of coyote or deer prints but the raccoons (Procyon lotor) and rabbits (Sylvilagus floridanus) left their signature tracks in the wee hours of the morning.
Raccoons pulled most of the trash out of the trash can by the bus stop yesterday. No surprise there; they must be extra hungry in this cold weather. If we had sharper eyes (and fewer smart phones) we would see their tracks more often, not just on snowy days.
For anyone lucky enough to grow up around snow, following animal tracks in winter is one the truly great adventures of childhood. Rabbits are easy because they don’t go too far from home.
The giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum) was dusted with snow this morning. There appears to be some dead foliage near the top. Be well big tree.
Jack pine (Pinus banksiana) of northern North America looking right at home with a little snow. The seed that grew into this sapling tree came from Niagara Parks Botanical Garden in Niagara Falls, Canada. Jack pine seeds are edible, the sap was used as medicine and caulk, and roots were used as cordage by Native Americans. If you’re a birder, you know that Kirtland’s warblers (Setophaga kirtlandii) are also known as jack pine warblers because they depend on dense, pure stands of young jack pines for breeding. The twisting tale of the pines and the warblers and the retreating ice sheets and buffalo herds and brown-headed cow birds, near-extinction, human intervention at it best , with help from the Canadians, the US Forest Service and other government agencies and volunteers, and on and on, is so interesting and beautiful and hopeful that one would have to be actively opposed to the magical study of natural history to resist the spell of this nail-biter saga.
Finally, a shot of the new Biology Greenhouse in front of and attached to the Life Sciences Building, both obviously works in progress. Sometime this summer the greenhouse will be full of plants. That will bring joy to the hearts of many.
The spent flower stalk of this sacahuista (Nolina microcarpa) continues in its photogenic ways on this snowy morning. Sacahuista was traditionally used by Native Americans of the southwestern US and northern Mexico as food, fiber, dye and medicine.
My efforts this winter have been dedicated to finding and ordering seeds and starting a lot of new plants. The rabbits are an emerging challenge. The greater the variety of plants, the better. Surrounding all of the plants with hardware cloth seems a bit excessive, so finding good medicinal plants that the rabbits don’t like to eat should help. And the only way to find out if the rabbits will or won’t eat them is to plant them in the garden and see what happens. The gardeners of Seattle have much to learn about our rapidly spreading rabbits.
This past summer, the greenhouse thrips (Heliothrips haemorrhoidalis) once again caused noticeable damage to certain plants in the Medicinal Herb Garden, specifically, the various rhododendrons (Rhododenron spp.) and the salal (Gaultheria shalon), both in the Ericaceae, the plant family that includes blueberries, cranberries, heaths, madronas and many other fine plants. A cold spell like this is a good thing for eliminating some of the plant pests, like greenhouse thrips, that are only marginally hardy around here. That said, with light snow falling, weather reports indicate that snow will soon turn to rain and nighttime temperatures will again remain above 32F; in short, we’re back to typical winter weather. That’s the news.
crunch of frosty ground
breath like smoke as clouds approach
cold spell nearly done
See you in the garden.
In my daily duty of scrolling through my emails, and ignoring the majority, I ALWAYS stop, open, and read your posts. Thank you for your observations and musings. “New snow is the best guest register the garden has”. Lovely.
Thanks, Priscilla, I’m glad you’re enjoying the blog. There should be a lot of new plants to write about this year once the weather warms and the growing season speeds up.
Keith