![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The past week has been very warm, by which I mean that it has been in the 30s and 40s during the day. It was as if at the beginning of March someone flipped a giant switch and suddenly we were having seasonal temperatures again.
All the snow has been melting, of course, and this morning then I looked out of my living room window I saw that all of the snow was gone from the front yard. This afternoon when I went out to mail some letters I stopped and examined the garden area. There had been a lot of leaves on the garden from the oak trees across the street, leaves that I never got raked up, and the first thing that I noticed was that those leaves were flat. I mean, you know how leaves make fluffy drifts when they fall on the ground? There was no fluff here; those leaves were a solid mat. Clearly the weight of the snow did it, but what an odd unnatural sight it is.
The other thing I noticed was that the two kolhrabi that I never got around to harvesting last year were still alive. I was astonished: I know that brassicas are cold-hardy but I have always been told that they don't overwinter in this zone. I can only surmise that the leaves, followed by the snow, was mulch enough to protect them. Kolhrabi are biennials, so if all goes well I'll get to see them flower and set seed this year. I don't know how good said seed will be, with only two individuals in the gene pool, but--Science!--it should be fun.
I guess I should not be as surprised as I was. Earlier this week I discovered that the bachelor buttons that I had planted next to the driveway had made it though the winter, with leaves more or less intact. I was completely flumoxed at this; the packet said they were annuals! Perhaps they are really "perennials but don't overwinter most places so we will sell them as annuals". Perhaps I need to have bachelor buttons and kolhrabi on my coat of arms. Cornflower azure and cabbage vert, rampant...
All the snow has been melting, of course, and this morning then I looked out of my living room window I saw that all of the snow was gone from the front yard. This afternoon when I went out to mail some letters I stopped and examined the garden area. There had been a lot of leaves on the garden from the oak trees across the street, leaves that I never got raked up, and the first thing that I noticed was that those leaves were flat. I mean, you know how leaves make fluffy drifts when they fall on the ground? There was no fluff here; those leaves were a solid mat. Clearly the weight of the snow did it, but what an odd unnatural sight it is.
The other thing I noticed was that the two kolhrabi that I never got around to harvesting last year were still alive. I was astonished: I know that brassicas are cold-hardy but I have always been told that they don't overwinter in this zone. I can only surmise that the leaves, followed by the snow, was mulch enough to protect them. Kolhrabi are biennials, so if all goes well I'll get to see them flower and set seed this year. I don't know how good said seed will be, with only two individuals in the gene pool, but--Science!--it should be fun.
I guess I should not be as surprised as I was. Earlier this week I discovered that the bachelor buttons that I had planted next to the driveway had made it though the winter, with leaves more or less intact. I was completely flumoxed at this; the packet said they were annuals! Perhaps they are really "perennials but don't overwinter most places so we will sell them as annuals". Perhaps I need to have bachelor buttons and kolhrabi on my coat of arms. Cornflower azure and cabbage vert, rampant...
