As the daffodils begin to peer the geraniums start to wane but still give a nice bit of colour in the sun room. In last years severe winter we lost more than 50 plants through complacency – they had always come through winters before without ‘heat’ – but 16F was just too cold for them. We’ll take better care of these replacements.
Who else has a little bit of winter colour to add brightness to these dull days before Christmas?
Well, I had a surprise a couple of weeks ago – walked into the sunroom
to find a hibiscus, which I’d had a year or so after it refused to
bloom for a neighbor, with a bright pink bloom – never even saw it
coming! Ethel Smith in snowy Minnesota
There’s still a little color in the open ground here — very little, and somewhat the worse for the frosts we’ve had lately.
So, not a rose.. but Helleborus niger, the Christmas rose, and a few blooms of Johnny-jump Up. Sorry, I don’t know it’s botanical name, but it’s clearly in the viola family. It seeds around and adds color, usually in the spring.
I’ve been out repairing holes the deer have made. We’ve had a lot of rain, and the ground is very soft. They even tried to eat some bulbocodium foliage, pulling the bulbs out of the ground. I’ve spread some Milorganite, a sewage-based fertilizer (3-6-6), and it smells. I’m hoping the odor will keep the deer away.
Mary Lou