by Jeanne

I don’t know about the weather where you live, but we’ve had the oddest season this year. I live in Zone 6B, the Piedmont area of Virginia.  Our winter weather varies from mild to severe, depending on the year.  Sometimes the snow gets dumped on the Blue Ridge Mountains to our west and at other times we get it dumped on us.  This year, it’s been unseasonably warm, and unfortunately many of the spring blooming bulbs have been fooled into an early bloom.

I have iris green and growing, pansies that reseeded and are flourishing, crocus and even some daffodils blooming. I feared for the peach trees; if they bud now, there’s no chance of getting peaches this year.  Fortunately, the buds remain dormant, but it’s going to be a close call if we get any more warm weather.

What can you do if your flowers start blooming too early? Nothing, actually. When I worked at the garden center on Long Island many years, we frequently received calls from worried homeowners who saw their plants blooming out of season.  You can try to protect the blooms from the icy blast of winter using newspaper or other protective coverings, but you can’t keep the coverings on all day.

I just leave my plants alone. Perhaps as a gardener, I ‘should’ be doing more, but the way I figure it, nature has developed these plants over the course of thousands of years…millions…who knows for sure? During that time, I’m sure there have been other years this warm.  There have also been wickedly cold winters that froze even the hardiest plants. In that time, Nature has adapted the plants to survive. She gives them the tools they need. In the meantime, I’ll just enjoy the early spring show.  This weekend the temperatures are plunging again, and we have a few more weeks of winter yet before I can officially welcome the daffodils.