Amaryllis

I have no idea what I was thinking trying to brighten up the winter by planting paperwhites in bowls filled with colorful glass marbles and water all these years. Yes, sure, the flowers are nice enough. But that sickly sweet smell they give off is worse than being trapped with a bunch of over-perfumed grannies in a hot elevator.

That’s why this year, even though red is my least-favorite color, I brought home a couple of big-ass amaryllis bulbs and gave them a try. (There are other colors, just not at my local garden center on the day that I thought I must buy some.) Wow! I’m going with these every year from now on. Not only do they have no smell, these long-blooming flowers—four from each bulb—are huge. And I have to say that even midlife-crisis-sports-car red has definitely lifted my spirits during this cold, gray stretch of the season.

Hoar Frost

I’ve lived in Minnesota for more than two decades. But I admit I had no idea that frost went by all sorts of different names until a couple of years ago when our local paper mistakenly proclaimed that the world was covered in “whore frost” and we should all get outside and see it.

Who wouldn’t want to see that? Turns out, they were talking about hoar frost, which is not anything like the aforementioned frost, I’d imagine.

Hoar frost occurs on winter nights when water vapor (fog, for example) touches very cold surfaces and freezes. Words can’t come close to describing the storybook beauty of hoar frost.

So, as always, when I woke up to a hoar-frost-covered wonderland last Saturday, I grabbed my camera and snapped a few photos. Enjoy!

Twisted Logic Parts I and II

Timber Press is kindly hosting a contest to win a copy of my book: “Decoding Gardening Advice”, so I wrote a couple of blog posts to go along with the offer.

Both posts are on “twisted logic,” the weird reality that a lot of gardening advice that’s so wrong actually sounds so right.

Go here to read both posts. If you’re short on time, just read to the second post, which talks about how much landscape fabric sucks and the folly of wrapping evergreens for winter. Honestly, if you’re going to mummify evergreens every winter, wouldn’t it be wiser to just go with some nice shrubs?

And while we’re on the topic of evergreens, what could possibly be the point of the burlap-wrapping strategy in the picture above? I’m so mystified, I just started a new blog category called “What In Tarnation?” My much-missed grandma Daisy used to say that when she thought something was “pert near crazy” and I figure I’ll carry on her tradition.

The Wonder of Fern Frost

Did you know that window frost is also known as fern frost? I’d never heard that until I decided to do a little research to find out how it’s possible that frost creeping across the poorly insulated windows of my house creates such intricately beautiful and leaf-like patterns.

As you probably know, frost appears on windows when it’s below freezing outside but fairly moist inside—which is why our single-pane bathroom window puts on a particularly good show.

Gardening Indoors on Cold Winter Days

It’s been a warm winter by Minnesota standards, meaning it took until just this week to dip down into the single digits and, finally, below zero. As it usually does, those Arctic temps sent me straight to a couple of local garden centers where I could walk around indoors and be around plants and smell dirt. You don’t realize how much you miss the smell of dirt until you live in a place where it’s so cold there are no smells for months and months—okay, sure, the dog poo that I have to pick up still smells. And there is a nice smoke smell coming from neighbors’  chimneys sometimes. But that’s about it.

I hadn’t planned on buying anything. I really just wanted to be warm, see some green stuff and talk to the parrot, Baby, at one of my favorite gardening haunts. But two big tables of little, teeny succulents caught my eye at one place where I stopped. So I picked out a few, along with a bright yellow pot and a bag of soil specifically for cacti and succulents, and brought everything home to plant.

I don’t have an indoor planting spot at the moment since the basement’s a big mess, so I just worked on the island in our kitchen, which is probably kind of gross. But we have a dog and three cats living with us. It’s not that clean here anyway.

Once I was done planting, my husband Mike worked the same kind of magic he does in our yard by adding small pieces of driftwood and some rocks. The result looks kind of like a terrarium without a top. Situated on a little table, when the sun hits it just right, our little pot of succulents feels like a tropical oasis offering us relief from the bitter, white cold.

Growing Herbs Indoors

One of the things I love most about summer is having an herb garden right outside my back door. Oregano, basil, dill, tarragon, sage, lavender, parsley and several kinds of thyme are right there ready to snip and toss into soup, salad or whatever we’re making, anytime. Sadly, having fresh herbs at the ready is just a six-month pleasure here in the Arctic, so in recent years I’ve been trying to grow herbs indoors once the weather starts to turn cold. I say “trying” because, honestly, it has been a bit trying, literally. But I’ve worked out some kinks and I’d like to share what I’ve learned with you now.

By far, the biggest challenge when growing herbs indoors is lighting. I’ve read, and people have told me, that it’s possible to grow some herbs fairly well in a sunny window. I say those people don’t live in Minnesota in the winter — or maybe they try to see the good in spindly plants where I’m more in the “off with their spider-mite-infested heads” camp. There is one exception: chives. Chives do last a long time when grown in a sunny spot, and you can snip off what you need for months as long as you leave at least 2 inches of growth on the plant.

Dealing With Ice, Snow and Winter’s Hungry Critters

Here are a few tips for helping your landscape make it through the winter unscathed by freezing temperatures, snow, ice and critters.

Let’s start with those de-icing salts people use to make sidewalks safer. These products are great for cutting down on slipping, but they wreak havoc on plants. Salty injury to deciduous trees and shrubs takes many forms but usually includes things like bud and twig dieback, stunted growth, and leaf scorch. Conifers, like spruces, pines, and firs often have mild to severe needle browning when exposed to salt spray.

To remedy the situation you could, of course, just skip the de-icer. But if you’d like to be nice to your plants without fear of breaking your neck, try taming your de-icer a bit by mixing it with another abrasive material like sand (50 pounds of sand to one pound of salt is a good ratio). You might also try a salt-free, de-icing compound made from calcium magnesium acetate or kitty litter. Rather than just throwing down a lot of de-icer on top of packed snow and ice, try sprinkling enough to loosen the ice and snow and then remove as much as you can with a shovel. Take care not to pile salty snow from driveways and sidewalks around plants and trees. Salt accumulation at the base of plants can force them into an early decline and eventually kill them.