The dearth of snow continues. Can we still call these little early flowers “snowdrops” when there’s no snow? “Raindrops” is already taken. Lawndrops? Not only are they coming up in lawn instead of snow, but the lawn is already turning green.
It’s hard to know how much temperature shift to take into account for next year’s plantings since change, including climate change, proceeds in a zigzag fashion. Even if the long-term trend is higher up the zone chart, it could still be cold again next winter. On the other hand, it could just keep right on warming up. I worried about my scilla, also known as Siberian Squill, but it turns out not to be native to Siberia at all, and is said to be able to flourish up to Zone 8. So I have two zones to spare.
Hellebores turn out to be native to the Mediterranean, which makes me wonder what on earth they’re doing blooming in Michigan in February and March – in snow, when we had any. Apparently they’ll be fine if Ann Arbor warms up.
I was able to grow paperwhite narcissus outdoors when I lived in Southern California, but had mixed results with other daffodils and tulips. In my front yard here I have an extremely satisfying collection of daffodils that bloom from March through April and into early May. The first of these are out and dancing right now, in the rain, little happy suns.
Deer do not eat any of these – the tulips they would love to feast on are coming up inside the fenced part of the garden. Rabbits will nibble on the emerging buds of grape hyacinth, but the hawks and owls are keeping the rabbits in check at the moment. That balance of power shifts sometimes for reasons I haven’t figured out. The bunnies are not abroad yet, but as Easter approaches my little window of Bunny Appreciation opens. Critters responsible for lovely baskets, brightly painted eggs, chocolate candy, and new beginnings, surely deserve to be cut a little slack while I check the garden fence for break-ins.
Still February, the trees still hung with snow, but the bulbs on my windowsill are talking spring. They’re cozy enough on the plant stand Doug made for them, at a sunny, south-facing window with a heat register on the floor below. You can see Zerlina down there on her cushion, showing her appreciation with a nap.
I mostly keep the amaryllis going from year to year, setting them outdoors when the weather warms up, lifting and storing the bulbs indoors in the fall, and potting them up again after Christmas. But every year I lose one or two, so every year I buy one or two new ones.
This is a close-up of my new bulb this year, an Amadeus. Is it named for Mozart, or is it Beloved of God? Amaryllis is named for a shepherdess Virgil wrote about, in Latin, but the name apparently comes from Greek amarysso, to sparkle. And it’s native to South Africa. I would love to know its indigenous name, but the internet has not been forthcoming. There’s an International Association for Plant Taxonomy that oversees official plant names, but any seed catalog will reveal that common names are a mix of history and marketing. The names of tomato varieties are always fun, and frequently informative. Early Girl and Longkeeper are useful to know, while Mortgage Lifter and Supersteak evoke the plump and sizeable. Tomato is pretty close to its indigenous Nahuatl name, Tomatl. Far preferable to solanum lycopersicum.
Meanwhile, the narcissus is starting to nose up through the snow. Narcissus should have a name joyfully recognizing how the flower announces spring, instead of being named for the fellow who fell in love with his own reflection. Is some kind of warning implied here, like not getting carried away by spring? Maybe Greeks, with their Mediterranean climate, didn’t understand the impact of spring on the rest of us. Our common name, daffodil, is a corruption of Asphodel, also Greek but a totally unrelated flower. It was good to corrupt it, since asphodel is associated with the underworld, but daffodil sounds like happy fun.
Hellebore is also a Greek name, possibly having to do with it being toxic, but it’s starting to bloom here in my yard, pushing the snow out of its way, right on time for its common name, Lenten Rose. It’s not a rose at all, but when you finally see a flower, even one that isn’t sweet, where no flower has dared go for months, let us call it a rose.
Robin Richstone 