Dallying In The Dirt, Issue #004 --- The Snowdrops Are Blooming!

The Snowdrops are in bloom! The snowdrops are in bloom! Forget the calendar Spring is here.

Some of them were in bloom in January and have just been sitting under the snow. They are a bit brown and beaten at the edges but there are some obvious new ones poking through the snow. This is only the second year for this bunch as they got planted in the new Hosta bed when it was created 2 years ago. My original bunch, in the front garden, are still under at least 15cm of hard icy snow. It’s great to have this new sunnier spot to herald the arrival of spring.

This bit of warm weather also allowed me to wander around the ponds and chop a hole in the ice. The bubblers usually keep a small hole open but they had frozen solid a couple of weeks ago. Apparently I should have braved the icy cold back then, as today I discovered that the bubblers were not working. Went down stairs to find the ground fault breaker had thrown. I hope the poor goldfish are still alive under all that ice. They should be; they’re pretty tough creatures.

I need that circuit running even more today, because I plugged in the heating cable for the floor of the cold frame and it’s on the same circuit. We will need the cold frame, (technically a hot frame because of the heating cable,) ready to go soon, as all of the pepper and eggplant seedlings are up and looking good. Tomorrow the Tomatoes and some of the early cole crops such as Rapini and Bok Choi will need to be seeded.

How quickly time has flown by. Was it just a couple of days ago that we were busy with Canada Blooms? It was a great show as usual with the highlights, for me, being the display gardens from the City of Toronto and the City of Brampton. It may just be the advancing years but I find the lighting in the display garden area, to be, much too subdued. The gardens and plants just don’t jump out with any of that WOW factor. Both Toronto and Brampton had auxiliary spotlighting to make their highlights jump.

I always enjoy the huge and dramatic floral arrangements by the various international designers and, this year, by the showcase of retail floral shops that had a great section of imaginative designs. They are all quite useless for having around the average house but it is still wonderful to see them and to try and store some of the ideas and tricks to use on a smaller scale at our own design competitions or the odd wedding that I seemed to get asked to do.

Both of my talks went quite well, at least I think so. The lunch meeting of the Garden Writers is always fun and we came away with a wide variety of product samples to try. You’ll hear more about them, plants and tools and fertilizers and new seeds, as I try them out.

Time to go and see if any more Snowdrops have appeared.

SBI!