Amaryllis update plus snow and seeds

I didn't do GBBD this month because it would have been exactly the same as last month's, but that does mean my amaryllis is still blooming!

Exotic Star is definitely a winner - I believe it's had eight flowers so far this season.

My green amaryllis will be blooming soon, more modestly; it's mostly been engaged in growing a flowering stem that is at this point, I kid you not, 26 inches long. And the third one has finally started growing, with a far shorter stem and a flower bud. It's nice to have flowers over a long period of time, anyway.

Aside from that, I did get some time for mulching and such in the community garden on MLK Day, when it was 50 degrees F. A couple of days later the temperature plunged and it snowed:

and the snow is still there because it's not even reached freezing again, mostly hovering just north of zero. Again. I went outside this morning into 18F and thought that was pleasantly warm! But it is a good time to plan, and to sort the seeds (I was brave and threw a bunch out) and to get some more at seed swaps, like Washington Gardener's event yesterday. Got lots of great stuff brought by fellow seed lovers and donated by companies, sometimes for understandable reasons:

I'm hoping it will grow lettuce instead of tomatoes.

Zero degrees

Well, it was zero degrees according to WeatherBug when we woke up this morning - that's 0 F, about -17 C - which is nothing compared to some other places in the country over the last couple of days, but pretty darn cold for central Maryland. According to the USDA Plant Hardiness Map, we're in zone 7a (revised from 6b a couple of years ago), and 0 to 5 is our Average Annual Extreme Minimum Temperature, which is by way of saying "it hardly ever gets this cold, but we're not going to say it's out of the ordinary." It feels extraordinary nonetheless. At least the wind has stopped (probably about -15 wind chill overnight).

A lot of people around here, including me, have made attempts to grow plants that stretch the climate zones a bit, and whatever's survived all the extremes so far may get clobbered this time. I didn't bother trying to wrap up what's left of baby Celeste fig tree #2, because it already looked like in September like it wasn't going to make it. I have a gift fig growing beautifully in a pot inside, which I'll plant out this spring and coddle and wrap in the fall, but it's a less hardy variety so may not make it through another winter like this. Of course, we may not have a winter like this; we may have the non-winter of a couple of years back.

I do think this may do for what was left of the pomegranate. And I suspect my carefully-covered cardoons in the demo garden are toast.

It's always hard to lose plants, especially ones you've taken care of over many years or grown from seedlings, but this is the nature of gardening. That doesn't mean we shouldn't take chances. Climate change is real (and weather like this is why I tend to say "climate change" rather than "global warming," although global warming is real too, and is a direct cause of extreme cold events), and gardening is going to get chancier as time goes on, which I think is all to the good - Henry Mitchell was right; gardeners are defiant. I spend half my time telling people to choose climate-appropriate varieties of things, and half telling them to challenge boundaries and try something wild and new, and those aren't incompatible aims. Just don't plant your entire yard in tropical plants (unless you want to).

A flower in December

Fair Amaryllis, wilt thou never peep/From forth the cave, and call me, and be mine?

Or, you know, peep forth somewhat earlier than expected. I guess this one was pre-chilled when I bought it, because I stuck it in the library to stay cool, and it sent up a flower stalk within days, and now look at it. The other two have just come out of their dark cave, and hopefully will break dormancy soon and bloom in January or February, but hey, I have a Christmas amaryllis, so I'm thrilled.

Everything outside is frozen. We haven't emptied out the deck railing boxes yet; we'd better get to that.

Ice

We had a snowfall yesterday, a few gentle and beautiful inches, and then ice on top of that. Ice is a force of nature that's aweful in the old sense, both destructive and terribly lovely. To which the modern response is pretty much, oh hell I hope the power's not going to go out and how will I drive in this, and - because we are not completely devoid of wonder - better get the camera out.

It's fascinating and transitory and worthy of capturing before the sun comes out and melts the fairytale glory, and also it's not quite enough that I have to worry about branches breaking everywhere, so, all good.

I wrote a book!

Announcing (for the few people who read me here and not other places) my novel!

This is the first book in a series of time travel adventure novels that I've been writing since 2002, finally available - in ebook form only for now, though in print in a few weeks, I hope.

You can find sample chapters and purchasing information at my website. It's chock-full of smuggling and literary quotations and romance and sailing ships and fistfights and the past and the future, and I hope you will check it out to see if it's… your cup of tea. Ha.

And no, this has nothing to do with gardening, aside from Camellia sinensis being a plant (which I tried to grow, once. Dismal failure). But it has everything to do with me, so.

Garden Bloggers' Where-Have-All-The-Flowers-Gone Day

This is all I got.

I think there are still some calendulas blooming at my community garden plot, but it was too much effort to go over there especially since we've been alerted to a huge soccer tournament with buses parked in our usual spots. (Perils of gardening in the largest youth soccerplex on the East Coast.) We've had a few days of really serious well-below-freezing weather here in Maryland, and that does it for most of the flowers, though the yellow chrysanthemum that accompanies this one (I don't have names for either. I get all my mums handed down from other people. I guess they're stepmums) still has some blooms in serious need of deadheading (if I ever got around to that). And probably there are a few roses hanging on too.

But mostly, we're done. (I have three amaryllis chilling in the library. With the lead pipe and the candlestick.)

Colors

I've been posting over on Grow It Eat It about how I managed to make a green cake using purple sweet potatoes, and today I made the first attempt at overcoming the problem: sweet potato muffins with yogurt and lemon juice to counteract the alkaline baking powder and baking soda. Except… the recipe involved molasses, which when combined with the deep purple turned a nice dark brown that totally failed to reveal any other color, whether purple or green or anything in between, and also created the expectation of a chocolate taste which is entirely not present. Though they taste pretty good anyway.

I guess I'll have to try again, with a sweetener in a lighter hue. Meanwhile, I think I'll make a sweet potato pie, which (from the photos I've seen) will be reliably and extraordinarily dark purple.

Speaking of anthocyanins, have some red oak leaves:

I'll get out and take some more leaf photos when the wind calms down a bit.