Pansies Under the Snowbank
I know that there are pansies under the snow in my yard. We’ve had a couple of days of melting and now the leaves and buds are visible. I can’t wait to see the pansies and the early bulbs pushing up. They are the promise of spring. Unseen during the snowy spells, but present, living, and ready to push through with happy blooms.
If you have been following my blog for a while, you know that I planted extra pansies last fall, in hopes of many blooms this spring. Unfortunately, half of the pansies got crunched when I had workers at my house for a project in November. They didn’t know that the flower bed next to the sidewalk was full of pansies, and the flowers got trampled. Sigh.
I realize my sadness at losing the pansies was out of proportion to my investment in them. The house project cost thousands of times the cost of a pansy, and I can always plant pansies next year. But once they were crushed, it was too late to plant more pansies. Now I won’t have pansies peeking out from under the snow next to the sidewalk. The damage was done.
Gardening is an interesting mix of present joy and past investment. Seeing the buds pushing through the snow gave me joy today. But that joy came because of my investment of time, energy and a little money last fall, when I planted a flat of pansies. And the investment is not without risk, since plants can succumb to drought, deep freezes, pests, trampling feet or any number of hazards. But as a gardener, I still invest, I still hope, all for the joy of the flower pushing through – reflecting hope.
Fall Planting
My garden blog was silent for too long, because I didn’t do much in my garden in August, other than enjoying the blooms. So after a lovely 2 week vacation in the NW, and one week of record rain in Colorado, it is definitely time for fall cleanup and fall planting.
My first step was exerting discipline on my front yard where the salvia, penstemon and coneflowers had reseeded and gone crazy. I still have plenty of these varieties left, but I also cleaned out a bunch of plants to share with friends. And I have added a few moonbeam coreopsis on the border, because I needed more yellow and less purple in the front yard. Also, the coreopsis have a long bloom time, through the late summer and beyond.
Fall is a great time for perennial planting, as they get nicely rooted in before winter and then next spring they will bloom and grow. And many nurseries have perennials on sale this time of year.
But my favorite fall activity is planting pansies. I love their happy faces throughout the fall, then often they bloom a bit after a light snow melts off. They then bloom again in the spring. This year I dedicated more space to pansies and planted 2 flats. I chose yellow and burgundy for my color palette. And just looking at them brings a smile to my face. While I was planting, a neighbor came by to chat. He mentioned that the word “pansy” should really mean “tough” because that’s what these little flowers are, by blooming on when other flowers die. Nothing wimpy about these flowers. So today, I am celebrating pansies and their happy flower faces.
The Dandelions Survived
I’m not sure which of my flowering shrubs, trees or perennials will bloom this season – since they have all been nipped by our unseasonably cold temperatures. Snow in April is not unusual in Denver, but several nights of low temperatures in the teens the last few weeks are unusual and potentially damaging for spring blooms. But as the snow has melted off my grass, the dandelions have definitely survived the cold. The fate of the rest of my spring blossoms will need to unfold, literally, over the next few weeks. I guess my garden chore today is digging dandelions, since I don’t like to use poison.
Healthy dandelions!
However, in addition to my dandelions (which I would not have mourned had they died), I was pleasantly surprised to find two creeping veronica plants blooming. I had planted six new plants last summer, but our dry fall and winter took their toll (and I didn’t water enough). I know this isn’t a great success rate, but they are in my parking strip area where plants need to be tough to survive and where I do very little supplemental watering. So finding them alive and blooming this morning was a great encouragement.
The rest of my survey of the garden left me uncertain. There are buds on the lilacs, but I can’t tell if they are frozen or alive. The iris and daylily foliage is showing definite signs of frost damage, but hopefully the blossoms will emerge. The candytuft looks healthy and ready to bloom. And of course, my pansies also survived the snow and are looking perky and moist along my front walkway. And I am hopeful that my tulips which were broken down by the weight of the snow will straighten toward the sun and bloom.
Creeping Veronica
This spring is going to be a mixed bag in the garden, but I am going to celebrate each blossom, knowing how precious it is. And I’m going to try to take the long view and know that there will be future springs as well. I am working on content for a retreat on “seasons of the soul” and I have been exploring the soul dimensions of winter-spring-summer-fall. One of my fundamental assumptions is that we experience all the seasons of the soul, but we can’t control the progression or timing, only our reaction. So I will choose to celebrate each blossom.
Pansies
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