I was at Walmart today buying more dirt to sow more seeds, and what do you know, all of their seeds racks were out. Yippee!!! A lot of their seeds are common stuff, but I found quite a few OP and heirloom varieties too, some packets were only 20 cents, how could I not buy some more, LOL!!!

Bonnie

I noticed yesterday in Lowe's that Ferry-Morse had some seeds in racks for sale that are on my list, much cheaper than Johnny's or Territorial. Do I save a few bucks or buy at a bigbox and take money away from a small business...sigh...decisions...where's the bank statement...

Dan

So far, this year, just along the front of the house is without snow. The rest of the yard is covered in 1-3 feet of snow and ice. Our yard always seems the last to lose its snow because the wind picks up the snow from the two yards to the west and plops it in the middle of our yard.

However, in that small, un-snow-covered part of the bed, I see little jonny jump ups that are bright green and happy. Of course, those guys always grow green. I could unshovel the snow and find them blooming under there, or so it seems. Still, a welcome sight.

I'm not sure when it will arrive but spring is welcome and so is the mud that comes with it.

j

I know that I just looked at them yesterday or the day before and thought how u-g-l-y those pots were. In today's weak sunlight, pale green is a very pretty color!

January here was nearly a remarkable 8°F above the average monthly temperature. After 3 years of below normal Januaries, this is really something!

Steve

It likes it there.

I am coming to the conclusion that a micro-climate one can create is on the south side of a building with continually amended soil (compost) and perennials, with a good soaking about every 10 days, once everything is established.

I do the same in the yard with mounds and dark rocks. Or next to the fence on the N side of the parcel. My 300 sf raised bed is on the S side of the house. In CA I used trees and structures in my yard for cooling as well.

Dan

But I did notice tonight that the light stayed light noticeably later, just a bit, but I could tell.

:)

Steve's digits

Inside or outside katy?

Dan

Sounds good, and easy to dance to.

By now my "regular" crocus are coming up too, and the daffodils on the warmest side are up—a couple of them are 6" high already, but most of them are still short.

A bunch of the perennials are starting to get new growth at the base too, but that’s all the kind of stuff that likes the cold weather, so I’m not really worried about them. It sure is nice to be able to go looking and find signs of "new life!" The resurrection has begun!

Skybird

Ah, so these are sets?

Dan

Dorothy

We haven't had a lot of big snows, like David has, but our temps have stayed consistently cold, and we've had over 10 weeks of snow cover now. I am soooooo ready for spring's arrival!

BTW, I ordered a Rovada Red Currant yesterday. Can anyone tell me how long it usually is till the first harvest? This is year three for our apple trees, and I'm hoping this is the year we get to taste our first one.

Bonnie

Yes, sets. I have started them from seeds, but that takes 2 years till harvest.

The BH/s family has a hunting camp way up Chalk Creek past St Elmo. You are making me anxious for summer to get up there and hunt mushrooms!!

I have started them from seeds, but that takes 2 years till harvest.

I was prepared to be impressed with all your garden space Katy... ;o)

Dan

Dorothy

We'll be in your neighborhood, sunshine, 2-3 x this summer, maybe up the pass and over to Taylor R. too...

:o)

Dan

Dan

Dorothy

We went up over Cottonwood last July and spent time looking around for good grounds and that looks pretty promising up thataways too, dry last year so didn't see any. We suspect that the bulk commercial pickers get up in there as the access is easy.

Sounds funny, but if you can take kids with you, they find them much more efficiently - closer to the ground and they love to be better than adults at something. Esp. morels.

Dan

Once upon a time, in the rain forests of West Africa when the mushroom season had started, I asked a guy that worked with me to take the pickup, go where the folks were bringing them out of the forest, and buy me a dollars worth to try. I handed him a small sack. He came back with the truck bed just about filled to the brim.

In the high Mopane forests of Zambia, there is a species of huge, edible mushrooms. Linked is a decent example. When they first open up, you can slice these things and cook them like a steak.

I suppose that the grass is turning green here. It really must be but the change is so incremental and slow. Yesterday afternoon, there were bugs flying about in the remarkably warm sunshine. But, there was a robin in the tree across the road just after New Years Day and I've only seen 4 since. And, 2 of those were in Minneapolis where I also saw low temperatures in the single digits.

They are having an especially snowy winter in the Twin Cities, I was told. It didn't look like too much after the record-breaking snow we had in 'o8-'o9 but I was more comfortable returning to the 6-8°F above normal temperatures we are having here this winter.

. . . a daffodil in your yard . . . robin singing merrily in your tree . . . lawn violet . . . door-to-door salesperson popping up . . ?

Steve

I've worked outdoors in the San Juan area of Colorado for 39 years and I don't recall a more consistently cold, below normal nor cloudier winter though I haven't looked at the records to verify that. Highs have been 10 degrees and more below average for 3 months now. Durango's average high today is 50 or 51, I think. El Nino, I guess. Still much better than the Northern Plains farm I grew up on.

My summer cabin is at 10,700' and not too far from Red Mtn. Pass and I bet there's 7-8 feet there. I ought to have snow most of the summer up there for cooling my beer outside.

You know what they say here: If summer happens on a weekend this year, we'll play golf. I wait until July 1 to pull the polyethylene off my 8'x20' cold frame because I usually get a late June freeze.

Mark

Dorothy

Mark

It was 65 here yesterday and today and almost all of my snow has melted off by now, but the backyard is still squishy wet. Not really a fun place to be walking around in, tho there is still some stuff that needs to be cut back and cleaned up before it gets growing too much. At least half of my perennials are showing signs of growth at the base, and some of them, the early ones like the saxifrage, the forget-me-nots, and some other stuff are very obviously growing at this point. My few primroses that always try to keep blooming all winter—but couldn’t this year because they were buried under snow much of the time (not that I got that much snow, but like Mark said, it just didn’t melt!), have a couple open flowers at this point, but they’re still way too feeble looking to bother taking a picture of.

It’s exciting to see things getting going again, and I hope it dries out enough that I can go out to start getting some stuff done soon—after I finish up in the basement! :-)

Happy spring all,
Skybird

P.S. Mark, maybe next time you’re out hiking around the pines you should take the huskies with you—complete with a keg of rum! ;-)

Mark

The ice at the bottom of the driveway is gone! I spent some trimming junipers today. It's a good chore to get out of the way.

Dorothy

We are so excited here! The predicted high for tomorrow is 40! A veritable heat wave. That's only 13 degrees below our average of 53.

Gosh, I hope I can plant my garden before August 1, this year.

Yesterday, at noon, a ufo appeared in our southern sky for about 3 minutes. It was very bright and yellow. Anyone else seen one of those lately?

I know I've seen that thing before, but it was so long ago that I can't remember what they called it.

Can anyone answer just one question? Is this last winter or next winter?

Mark

I just checked NOAA, and it’s supposed to be UFO’y down there on Friday, and it’s supposed to be partly UFO’y and gettin’ near 50 on Saturday. Hope they’re right—for your sake! But now I’m gonna be downright mean! It was 60 here yesterday and I was out in the backyard cleaning up some of the perennials—and I got too hot! But no good thing lasts forever, and it’s just about freezing out there now—with a chance for snow!

Hang in there! It’ll get better! Just close your eyes and dream of that beautiful view you have from your cabin!

So you can see (or feel) Russia from your house, huh?

;-)
Skybird

My regular crocus also have visible buds now, the daffodils continue to grow, but no buds yet, and a couple of the hyacinths are already just barely visible at the top of the mulch.

Snow crocus - 03.03.10

Snow crocus - 03.09.10

It’s not gonna be so nice around here tomorrow, but spring is definitely on the way!
Skybird

It was a beautiful day yesterday. Was down in the springs picking up some gear for my annual training in Hawaii and visiting my mom. Trying to get her on to gardenweb. Her garden is going to be amazing too. I was walking around in a tank top. Upon my return to denver at 2pm....snow flakes. Now - burrrrrrrrrrrr. A high of 38 degrees today.

Thanks for the inspiration of your crocus!!!!

Beautiful crocus, or is it croci? At Vallecito, the wild pasque flowers bloom in profusion among the pines beginning in mid April. Seeing them, especially at the upper end of the lake would be worth a drive from Denver. They look like a hairy crocus and bloom just after the snow melt. In fact, I refer to them as wild crocus, although I have no idea to what family they belong.

My mention of the former U.S.S.R. was only meant as a weather, not political metaphor. Politically, I'd have to refer to the "new" Durango (our county is a victim of large growth and the resulting political change in recent years) as a "people's republic".

I have a couple of pictures of those pasque flowers, I think. Maybe I could post them if I could figure out how. Maybe even a thread on how to transplant and establish that pretty little wild flower. I've tried twice, but failed.

Mark

Decades ago I was observing weather in the CA Central Valley, and we had one year where the tule fog stuck around for ~ 10-12 days, left for a day, then stuck around for ~16 days, visibilities no more than 1/4 mile and ceilings no more than 6-700 feet - thick, dense fog and dark, dark cold days. Anyway, I was on shift when the fog broke the second time and I did a local observation to the airfield personnel that the fog was breaking to the east, and about 15 minutes later it all broke, and you could see all sorts of people outside, and it seemed soon thereafter every one of them called to thank me for letting them see the sun as it broke thru.

Probably the height of my popularity. ;o)

And skybird, stop showing off. You're making us all jealous.

Dan

So who knows what the "real" plural of crocus is!!! Not I! And I’ll continue to word my sentences so I can just keep using "crocus" and have it sound right! :-)

I was just joking around with my reference to Russia, Mark. Couldn’t resist as I had just seen a reference to "that remark" on TV recently!

But re: your comment about the People’s Republic of Durango, I commented somewhere else around here lately that that place has just gotten WAY too big for its britches! I had to go straight through it a couple years ago when I came down 550 off of Red Mountain, and now I do my best to stay on 160 to avoid "The City" when I’m down there on vacation! I prefer to remember is like it was in the Olde Days—two-lane roads and NO stop lights!

Is this the pasque flower you have down there, Mark?

If so, it’s Pulsatilla patens, previously Anemone patens, and Rocky Mountain Pasque Flower is one of its common names. It’s a Colorado native. I love the fuzzy, fuzzy buds, and they’re so obvious since the buds/flowers come up before the foliage. I thought I had a better picture of the buds with lots more of them, but I can’t find it right now!

This was one of "those things" I always wanted when I was selling them, and shortly after I moved in here (and out of the rental house) I bought one. I’ve tried the other, more commonly sold ones—Pulsatilla vulgaris—but they just didn’t seem to do as well for me, and I don’t remember that they had the soft fuzzy buds either. In the yard they’ll rebloom at least once, and sometimes twice, if deadheaded promptly. How many mountainsides do you think you could deadhead in a day, Mark? ;-) Those are old Pulsatilla pics, BTW. Mine seems to be coming up unusually slowly this year!

Post your pics too, Mark, so we can compare them. Do you have a photo hosting site? That’s what you need to be able to post them here. I didn’t know how to do it back in ‘07 after I got my first "unreal" (digital!) camera, so I asked for help here and got LOTS of it! I’ll link the thread on the bottom. I love Picasa! You can download your photos into Picasa, edit them if you want to, then you transfer them to Picasa Web Albums, and from there you have links to post them online. The thread I’m linking is a long, rambling one—it was kinda one of our fun RMG "conversations," but the real serious information about Picasa starts down around May 1. But there’s miscellaneous stuff about other photo hosting sites further up in the thread too! If you already have somewhere where you can download them and edit them, I understand you can use something like Photobucket to easily post them. If you’re not sure you’re doing it right the first time, don’t be afraid to try. Nobody around here is gonna laugh at you! I’m betting there are other people around here again wondering how to do it, because back when I started that thread a couple other people piped up that they had been wondering how to do it too but felt too dumb to ask how. I just don’t mind sounding dumb—and I know everybody around here is friendly—as that thread proves!

Don’t we ALL go crazy when we’re buying bulbs, Red? (Aren’t you still in a rental?) I usually wind up not getting most of what I buy planted, and they wind up helping to "enhance" my compost pile! I was good last fall and didn’t buy any more—I have other, less expensive stuff to put on the compost pile! But I bet that by the time you get back from your two weeks, you’ll have flowers!

My "not so nice" day today turned out to be a lot nicer than "they" were predicting! It’s up to 55 in the backyard, and the sun’s been shining most of the day. Supposed to be up to almost 60 on Saturday!

Anybody else have spring flower pictures—or spring "progress" pics to post here yet?

Skybird

P.S. Digit, I LOVED your little snowdrops picture up above. Just didn’t get around to replying when you posted it!

Daffies just clearing the mulch and a couple tulips, but that's it. I'm hoping I can keep enough lettuce and spinach for a pot luck at the end of the month, but it's pretty tasty and not sure it's going to make it...

Dan

Our pasque flowers are slightly different but certainly the same species. I looked back for some pictures and I have a few but no great ones. Since I'm an old geezer and computer illiterate, I don't know how to post a picture. I'll send you a couple. When they bloom this spring (early September, ha ha) I'll try to get some better pictures.

I love those flowers. Another beautiful place to view them is in the Amphitheater, just above Ouray. The slopes next to Haviland Lake are also carpeted with pasque flowers. Haviland is between Purgatory Ski Area and Durango.

By the way, that big bright, yellow ufo was visible all day today. It traveled quite slowly, coming into view in the eastern sky before 7 a.m. and finally disappearing behind the mountain to the west at six. Wonder what it is?

Mark

And, thank you! You didn’t even know it, but you answered one of my questions! I got some crocus zonatus at last year’s Fall Swap, and didn’t get them in the ground till WAY late. Have never grown them before and didn’t have a clue what to expect, but really wasn’t expecting to see anything before late summer, so when they started to come up like gang busters, I was wondering if they were gonna bloom this spring since I planted them so late! So the foliage comes up in spring, and then they don’t bloom till fall? I got a Colchicum at the Fall Swap of ‘08, and it didn’t get foliage or flowers till late summer—but then it was absolutely beautiful—but it only came up and bloomed the one year, and apparently died, because I haven’t seen it since. I need to get a couple more of those! The flowers reminded me of orchid cactus blooms. It was a WOW plant!

And if anybody wants to see the "wildflower meadows" Mark has down where he lives, here are the pics he emailed me of his pasque flowers. I’m not sure if it’s exactly the same species I have or not, but it’s sure close if it’s not the same. The flowers aren’t as obvious as my closeups since they’re "out in nature!" I bet it’s wonderful to see them growing out there in person!

And, one more! Talk about having something to brag about! This is the view of "Storm Peak and Velocity Basin" from Mark’s cabin above Silverton! How’d you like to be lookin’ at that from your deck? Yowza!
(Click on any of the pics to enlarge)

Glad to hear you were all UFO’y around there today, Mark!

Skybird

P.S. Mark, what time of the year was it when you tried transplanting the Pulsatilla before?

I decided to speed things up yesterday so I took a snow shovel and extension ladder to the tulip/ daffodil bed. The ladder slipped when I was crawling out- I'd sure hate to fall that far.

(Just kidding- a little)

Mark

And that mackerel sky to the east is a sure indicator of wind.

Zoiks!

Dan

Even if it is freezing out, I usually open a door due to the heat from the sun blasting in through all the windows. I don't get bugs flying in through the door in winter! Today, I left the front door open for half an hour and, lo and behold, a fly blew in.

I know, exciting, huh?

What caused the rotation of that storm today? Is that more common in spring than winter? If I'm not mistaken, isn't that more common on the Front Range than SW Colorado?

Regards,
Mark

Still waiting for Pineapple Express and classic El Niño flow, though. Still waiting...but our East Coast and Southern Europe have had enough of this winter, so they'll wait some more, surely.

Dan

Dan, I'm not sure what all that weather-talk means but it sure was a great day for snowshoeing! Snow was falling, we were going up hill for a couple hours but, man, was it nice and "warm". We even took off our hats and let the snow cover our hair. Southern Europe? I guess that's why some friends in, well just outside of, Barcelona were snowed in a few days ago.

I AM looking forward to spring but winter sure is fun right now.

In my 39 winters here I've witnessed numerous El Nino's. Most result in a wetter and colder than average winter (it seems from memory) here in SW Co. This winter has been slightly above average in terms of moisture and extremely cold, especially in terms of daily highs. Clouds and inversions. Isn't that somewhat consistent with a "classic" El Nino? Also, a drier north is the norm under that scenario, isn't it?

Regards,
Mark

Dan

I read somewhere that much of our weather originates in the vicinity of Hawaii. Is that accurate? Is that the Pineapple Express to which you refer?

Also, I thought that the Nortwest was more likely than not to experience a dry winter when an El Nino has set up. Is that not correct? Just wondering.

Isn't the wet weather of the Northeast a bit unusual during an El Nino winter?

Thanks, Mark

Thanks,
Mark

But back OT: lots of daffies poking their leaves out lately and I see some tulips starting and the leftover clover is starting to spread in the veggie garden...

Dan

One of my tomato seeds has sprouted already! I'm pretty excited about that.

But yes there are, at least 6 lawn violets blooming in my yard! And, in just about the warmest and most sheltered location hereabouts, I discovered the snowberry bushes were leafing out!

Steve

And life gets more exciting with each passing day
And love is either in your heart or on its way.

Don't you know that it's worth every treasure on earth
To be young at heart.
For as rich as you are, it's much better by far
To be young at heart.

And if you should survive to 105
Look at all you'll derive, out of being alive.
Then here is the best part
You have a head start
If you are among the very young at heart.