Buds

You know it is the dead of winter in Michigan when the garden is a place to long for from afar. Most of my garden views now are through the windows. Not that I didn’t plan for good views from inside, but the sheer thrill of a landscape is being in it, or experiencing it up close. I would be lying if I said I enjoyed the winter as much as the other three seasons. Ha!~ I hate being cooped up, and I am not a skier or an ice fisherman. Being outside now is a necessity to get from one place to another. I do not walk my garden in the winter. I cannot really explain this, but I do not want to disturb my dormant landscape. In my opinion, the winter is the time to let everything as it is, be. As it is, to see this part of the garden in winter requires gearing up – as in coat, hat, boots and gloves. Today I jump tromped through the snow rather that shoveling the upper deck, to take this picture. Was it worth the effort? But for a gorgeous circa 1920 Jarre de Biot, from the now closed Poterie Provencale that makes my heart beat faster every time I look at it, this scene is not that scenic. A garden growing and representing is a tough act to follow.

The best part of it may be the Parrotia Persica. There are four of them in the driveway garden. I planted them close to 20 years ago. This means they are old enough to exhibit that beautiful exfoliating bark prized by gardeners. They also hang on to their leaves throughout all but the windiest of winters. Those copper color leaves are a sight for winter sore eyes.

Even these dead leaves look good to me. But the fact of the matter is I am not looking at anything that is dead. Hibernating would be a better and much less emotionally charged word. Every woody plant in my yard grew and set buds for the spring of 2018 last summer. Some buds, on spring flowering trees are flower buds.  Smaller buds will surely become leaves once the weather breaks. The dead leaves from 2017 on the parrotias will be pushed off in the spring, when the 2018 leaf buds set in 2017, swell and grow. The parrotias were ready for this winter long before I was.

The flower buds on magnolia trees are large and fuzzy. No big fuzzy oval buds on a magnolia going in to winter means there will be no flowers. Terribly cold weather can damage or destroy those flower buds, while the leaf buds survive. A flower bud is a big and vulnerable structure, whereas every tree keeps their leaf buds close to their vest until the winter passes. It is an easy matter to spot magnolia flower buds in winter, especially when a light and dry snow falls. You can see your future in the garden if you see the signs. Happily, I see magnolia flowers in my future.

Nature does not wait until the last minute to make a move. As no growth goes on during the winter months, the formation of buds for the spring to come have to be made many months in advance. This is why watering trees and shrubs in August and on through the fall is so important. Once the leaves drop, and the ground freezes, there will be no more activity until the season turns to spring. It only makes sense that the growth of any woody plant instigated by the spring of one year culminates in the readiness for the spring of the following year. This is not in any way magical.  It is survival.

The dogwoods are the easiest to read. The big fat round buds set in September are flower buds. The small pointed buds will eventually unfurl and become leaves. In a way, I regret knowing in advance whether there will be a heavy dogwood bloom 6 months in advance of the fact. But I do like knowing in advance that if I water my trees properly at the time they are setting flower and leaf buds, I am giving them a helping hand.

Though it might appear that all there is to see here are sticks and snow, nothing could be further from the truth. Thousands upon thousands of fully formed but dormant buds are ready and waiting for the light to turn green. Imagine that.The spring season every gardener longs for will finally arrive, and will be impossible to keep up with.

The spring is a rush of events almost impossible to keep track of. I am sure there are moments I miss, no matter how much effort I put towards experiencing it all. Today I took note of the columnar fruiting pear tree in the foreground of this picture, and imagined what it will be to see it it in full bloom with the leaf shoots not far behind. I had time for that today. Those flowers in spring will last but a moment.

I also had time to think about how nature is a consummate engineer. Very little of the story of survival is left to chance. That is a big topic best left to the dog days of winter to think about. All the bare branches outlined in snow today were beautiful. But what is simmering beneath the surface is better than beautiful.

These evergreen Frazier fir boughs were cut in November. They were stuffed in to dry floral foam set in the containers I have at the end of my driveway. Though they were cut from the tree 3 months ago, the dormant buds are still plump, juicy, and viable. This is what I would call the miracle of the will to live. That will to live and prosper is so strong in every living thing. Nature makes the plant world, in all of its forms, possible. Viable.

Though the view out my window is this shade of blah and that shade of blah, and all that blah dusted with a fresh layer of snow from grey skies, what lies in wait beneath the surface is very exciting, indeed. Waiting out the winter is an exercise in restraint and appreciation. Truly.

 

Budded

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If you garden, March is an acutely disappointing month.  If March feels like an illness to you, it is. That late winter gardener’s fever–entirely predictable.  The hope that spring is almost here when it is in fact many weeks away-a normal symptom of said illness.  Once March arrives, no matter what constitutes likely and reasonable, I am over the winter.  I have eyes, ears and a nose for spring.  Though I have written this in countless ways for the last month, this time I really mean it!  The thought that spring is near has been much on my mind- for weeks.  What the gardening heart hopes for bears no remote resemblance to reality-that conflict would be a good definition of a Michigan March.  Hope versus reality-game on.

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My yard is a trashed by the winter.The grass is the color of hay.  That hay has been pounded into the ground by the corgis, so the color is actually dirty hay.  How many gallons of paint do you suppose a paint manufacturer might sell if they names a color dirty hay?  Well, ok, gardeners might warm up to it.  But the idea of dirty hay is pretty unappetizing.  Just like March in Michigan.

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The isotoma around my fountain at home looks dead.  The leaves are brown and black, accented by a glaze of rot.  Who knows if or how much of it has survived this winter.  Some of the coldest days of the winter are courtesy of this March.  How it looks right now-horrifying.  The clematis are but brittle sticks, and the boxwood are burned.  My moss stuffed cow-known as Lady Miss Bunny, has dead weeds sticking out of her side.  Dead rotting leaves are sprinkled all over the yard.  Could my garden possibly look worse than it does right now?

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The European ginger?  The leaves are limp, and lay flat on the ground-exhausted.  I so understand this feeling.  The look of it-I try not to look.  Many of the leaves have those large black patches gardeners know as decomposition.  I do not dare clean them up yet-we have night forecasts in the 20’s for the next week.  Most of the snow was gone, meaning really cold night temperatures could hurt.

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My hopes for March are always unrealistic.  Last year’s March was warm-enticing.  Though it satisfied my need for an early spring, it made me uneasy.  April confirmed that unease.  Freezing temperatures over an extended period of April days was destructive to early spring flowering trees, maples, and birch.  No spring for us, last year.  The 2012 spring disaster- every gardener in my zone remembers.  The nights covering vulnerable plants to no avail. All of the hellebores blooming collapsed in pathetic heaps on the ground. Such shock-realizing that our spring would be erased by deadly low temperatures.  Gardeners far away wrote to me, their voices charged with grief and irritation very much like mine.  Gardeners in my zone and in many other regions have been waiting for a glorious spring for close to 2 years.

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March is anything but a spring month; March is in fact the last of the winter season.  We have has snow more days these first 2 weeks of March, than not.   A single oddball 62 degree day made me believe the winter was over-I truly believed that the crocus, eranthis and hellebores were but days away.  But one day does not a spring season make. The utter cold has returned; just this morning, four inches of fresh snow.  I m shoveling, not gardening.  March is a month marked by the tumultuous transition from one season to another.  Sometimes that transition is easy and sensible.  Other times that transition is so slow, boring, and treacherous,  one could weep.

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The trees and shrubs have no such angst.  They go dormant given the day length and temperatures.  They set buds for spring season, months ahead.  They prepare.  They have no expectation of mercy.  They wait.  The urge to emerge revolves around a complex set of conditions.  Natural relationships that culminate in the OK to grow.

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A bud is an undeveloped shoot.  A leaf or a flower shoot.  Once formed, that bud may lay dormant for months, waiting for the moment when conditions favor growth.  When woody plants form buds, the exterior of that bud is tough-encapsulating.  Breaking dormancy is a very vulnerable state-best not to do so, unless there is a reasonable expectation of success.  Nature provides mechanisms by which that tender stage we call growth is protected from its enemies, until the time is right.   Many plant buds are covered in scales.  These modified leaves protect the life brewing within that bud from cold, wind,and physical insult.

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Many buds are covered in a gummy substance that further protects them from untoward conditions.  These magnolia flower buds have a remarkably rigid hinged casing that is covered in soft downy hair.  This magnolia is always the first plant to bloom in my yard. The buds are swelling, meaning that spring will arrive. Everywhere in my zone the buds are beginning to swell.  They anticipate spring in a very different way than I do.  They intuit the natural shift of the season. They respond to that subtle change in conditions, in a slow and subtle way.  These buds may swell, but they won’t break dormancy until there is a more extended period of moderate weather.

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The buds can hold a very long time, if the weather does not take a more friendly turn. Most perennials have naked buds. What you see in this picture is the remains of my asparagus.  The spring shoots are still safely ensconced below ground. They have little defense against bitter cold. They stay dormant, buds and all, until they have the all clear. The leaf buds of the roses, encased in the same waxy substance as the stems.  They are ready, but holding their cards close.

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The cream colored knobs on this yew-the flowers that will hardly be noticed.  The flowering stage is remarkable, the day a gust of wind throws a cloud of yellow pollen into the air.  At the tip of each branch, an elongated bud known as a candle.  Named for its resemblance to a candle, this growth tip is comprised of the countless needles which will populate the new shoots.  These needles lay flat against the stem, until the spring weather encourages them to spread out and grow.  The buds do a better job of predicting the arrival of spring than my winter weary heart.