Winter's here and still lingering!

It's funny. We barely had winter during winter, and now winter is clinging after spring arrived. What's up with that?

03/26/13 - Koda by the birdbath

The greenhouse looks pretty sad, I know. We're expecting a week of really cold temperatures at night. It's quite odd. The lows are like 37, 38, 35? But when I wake up in the morning, everything's frosted over and water has frozen to ice. We didn't bother with putting the plastic on the greenhouse this winter because we barely had freezes - but it seems spring is a little odd this year. The heater has been turned on for a total of 5 times thus far? Also, the annoying thing is that a little bird moved in so I had to leave a little hole at the top for the bird to fly in and out. The tarps are temporary and I usually open it up for the sun before closing it up for the night when temps drop low again.

Also, before I forget - I believe I may have roses growing from a discarded bouquet. My father bought my mother a valentine's day bouquet and after she finished enjoying the flowers, she tossed them over the porch. I gathered the roses and stuck them in a neat little row in my bed. I totally forgot about them until it was pointed out to me that some of them were growing. Totally surprised me because I figured that after a few freezes since then, that the roses must be long gone. I'm trying to ignore the roses, except to water them here and there, because I don't want to invest any 'emotions' into them. I hate it when something shows a little sign of life and I get excited and then it keels over. It looks like three or four of them have shown signs of life.

I can not teach Koda to stay off the beds. It was fine at first because I figure once everything grows in, he won't be able to run up and down the beds. Then he resorted to digging holes in a couple of the beds so I had to slap up a bunch of fences to keep him off them. Ugh.

I miss when winter used to be winter. When winter came around, everything died down. Then when spring was coming, all you had to do was rake junk off the beds to make everything look fresh again. Instead it's just chilly with a frost once in a blue moon. The weeds are frost resistant (some with thorns!) and the amaryllis - the poor amaryllis - keep trying to grow. This spring, they've been stung down by the frost over and over. They're going to look pitiful once warm temperatures are on the way. I already lost one flower bud that was coming up. I just worry that some of my seed-grown bulbs might have a maiden bloom trying to come up and that the frost destroyed it.