Gardening Journal: Finally a Warming Trend! #Club5050

I have been anxiously awaiting the start of our gardening season... and waiting, and waiting, and waiting...

The problem is that we have been having the coldest start to the year in over 50 years, but now there is finally a small glimmer of hope.

This morning, when I looked at our 10-day weather forecast, I saw for the first time this year the temperatures consistently above 50 degrees (10C) for the daily high, and even a few over 60 degrees (15.5C) with sunshine next week!

So far, we have mostly been doing bits of "clean-up" in the garden, waiting for warmer times to come along.

Because the temperatures have been so low, we have been worried that there can still be overnight frost (it has happened, a couple of times) which would kill the very young plants.

Meanwhile, some of the plants in the garden are coming along, as signs of spring:

Our pink rhododendron out towards the street is finally starting to bloom... about two weeks later than normal. In this particular case, the cold is actually a positive, because the flowering season is longer than usual.

Our catmint from last year is shooting up in a big puffy "pillow" of new growth. Once the warmer season come here, it will grow even more and — in summer — it will set lots of purple flowers that attract many bees and butterflies!

This next plant is a different kind of catmint that we purchased at the garden center just a couple of weeks ago. It seems to be doing pretty well.

We like growing these particular kinds of plants because our local herd of deer will leave them alone... and they mostly think our garden is a giant "salad bar," out there just for their convenience!

The white "Candytufts" always do quite well and have a long flowering season:

We're trying to persuade them to spread as a nice groundcover, but the challenge we always face is that there are lots of super-invasive buttercups in that area (the larger green leaves between the flowers) and they are almost impossible to get rid of... even a small section of roots left behind is enough to start a whole new set of plants, and they propagate not by seed, but by root spread.

Although the plant above might look very similar to the catmint, it is actually one of our sage plants that made it through the winter OK... and we are very happy to see it growing, as it is another deer-resistant plant.

Other than these, there's really not much new — or colorful — happening in the garden... and we mostly just wait for the warmer weather!

Making this post #club5050 in keeping with community guidelines!

Till the next, thank you for visiting! All photos are my own, usually taken in nature, or around our property.
April 20th, 2023