Can Winter Be Over ?

    With a lot of luck, outdoor gardening should start again by the first of June after a seemingly endless winter's winter. April is the time to nurture the seedlings started indoors in preparation of the hopefully forthcoming season of warmth. This year, for the first time, I lost many seedlings to what appeared to be damp off. I even resorted to spraying them with the fungicide Captan. I hesitate to use any chemicals other than fertilizer but was driven to desperation. Perhaps the seedlings caught my hopelessness under the persistent, never ending, snowfalls and they too gave up the thought of winter ever ending and expired in depression. I myself fought it off with images of Palm trees under a tropical sun. A friend of mine who once lived in Hawaii claimed that whenever he wanted additional plants he just cut off a piece of one and stuck it into the ground where it flourished. I'd like to believe that. Is that what the image of heaven  is to a gardener?

    When the snows finally abated and some of the ground recently reappeared, the recycled plants became visible:  mounds of deer spoor. Somehow, I much prefer the original form. Now comes the battle to salvage some of the tulips so that they may flower.

    One surprise I had was the seed pods that formed on the Cyclamen. Every year I buy some Cyclamen for Kay to help brighten the winter. I selected the best ones out of hundreds. I have never been able to keep the corms viable for the next season and have had to purchase new plants every year. I am contemplating planting the seeds from this year's crop after they ripen, if I have the patience to nurture them for two years before flowering. I remember one time I tried to germinate Bear Grass seeds. After some several months of nothing, I tossed them. It was later that I learned that germination could take up to a year.

    This year it took more than two months for my Datura seeds to germinate. Our summers are not all that long and I like to start them early to guarantee flowers that result in at least one seed pod with viable seeds for the next year. One pod is enough as it must contain a hundred seeds. Later pods are removed as soon as they form for, hopefully, many more flowers

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