For as long as I have been gardening in Colorado, this is the first year I did not have crocuses in bloom by mid-January. Buried beneath several feet of snow, even the earliest varieties had the good sense to wait until they could see the light of day before coming up.
Although late crocuses were by no means the end of the world, it did make for a very long winter.
Much as we profess to enjoy cold and snow, Front Range gardeners aren’t really accustomed to this much winter. We tell ourselves that we’re jealous of the “lauded” snow cover of more northerly latitudes and mountain communities like Breckenridge and Aspen, but if we truly meant what we said we could move to the mountains – or North Dakota.
My mom and dad spent their childhoods in Wisconsin and North Dakota, respectively, and I grew up regaled with stories of “real winters.” Both of my parents fled the northern-tier states the minute they reached adulthood. After this winter’s taste of the real thing I completely understand why they chose to escape the cold and snow.
This year I couldn’t get out my front door from the end of December through mid-February. My northeast-facing front yard remained entombed in snowbanks that were several feet high in some places for the entire winter. The backyard melted more quickly, but it was an obstacle course of drifts and dangerously hidden holes for three months. After nearly breaking my ankle trying to take kitchen scraps to the compost, I abandoned that idea for January and most of February.
Christmas decorations remained frozen in the ground through Valentine’s Day. Containers that still held flowers at Thanksgiving cracked and fell to pieces during the cold snap. After a couple of months of this, every time I turned the corner onto my street, I started singing Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song:” “I come from the land of ice and snow …”
All of this snow has been hard on our neglected pots and our collective psyches, but, admittedly, it has very likely been good for our gardens. A recent string of dry winters made for year-round gardening opportunities, but the trade-off, deficient snowfalls, had left our soils severely depleted of moisture. Plants that start out droughtstressed in spring are less able to cope with summer’s heat, and many previously considered ironclad died. That shouldn’t be a problem this year.
So, gardeners should be rejoicing.
And those missing January crocuses? They popped up the minute the snow receded around the third week in February, none the worse for having had the rare opportunity to sleep in for a bit longer. Perhaps we could all learn a thing or two from the crocuses. Is it really such a bad thing to have had an entire winter’s R and R before returning to the frenzied garden year? We should probably all be grateful that, besides all of the moisture this winter, we got a break from gardening.
