Stories indexed with the term ‘plants’

Marianne Rzepka

Winter is so over. And what was all that about, anyway?

Gardeners have no time to fret over winter anymore. The time for looking at catalogs and polishing up pruner blades is over. It’s also past time for cruising through garden stores, peering at seed packets and picking through boxes of gladiola bulbs.

It’s time for getting out, for appreciating the early spring flowers (note to self: more crocuses and chinodoxia next year), clearing out the debris of leaves, windblown newspapers and fallen branches, maybe even cleaning out the garage on a warm day. It’s a maddening time of year: One week snow is covering your daffodils; the next temperatures hit 70s. You can’t be fooled by either extreme.

On those cold, wet days, you stay home and swear. On those warm and sunny days, you just have to get outside. In the past few weeks, I’ve been knocking around my yard like an outdoor Roomba, peering at the buds and new leaves on my lilac and redbud tree. I squint along the ground, looking for the first signs of emerging bloodroot and hepatica – the cutest of the cute spring blooms. [Full Story]