If you're in a suburb north of Seattle you are in USDA 8, and you can garden throughout the year. I live in a suburb north of Seattle and (if it wasn't after dark at the moment) could watch Anna's hummingbirds buzzing around the Grevillea victoriae shrubs in full bloom outside my office window or walk over and look at the Chinese witchhazel shrub blooming on the other side of the house. Gardening services have been working in the neighborhood, when I went to town I saw several out working commercial accounts as well.

Winter? What's that?

Go to Jim Eichner's Winter Seed Sowing Event today and gain a whole new way to look at winter gardening. It's amazing how well it works, and how it helps to get rid of those mid-winter blues! If you can't make it to the seed sowing, check out the Winter Sowing Forum on GardenWeb.

I agree with bboy - with yesterday's weather, there shouldn't be any reason not to be gardening, if that is your desire. Seasonally appropriate activities include pruning of fruit and deciduous trees and shrubs, dormant season spraying, perennial clean up, cutting back old foliage on hellebores and epimediums, developing a compost pile and numerous other ongoing activities like weeding. And planting, transplanting and dividing. Winter is when I do a good 85% of my gardening chores as I am too busy in season with other people's gardens to spend much time in my own.

Yep, gardengal48 is right on, I've been doing all of that! Like bboy said, there hasn't been much of a winter. There is always lots to do in my garden, as long as plants keep growing, the wind keeps blowing and insects and slugs keep multiplying. Now is a good time to find slug eggs and give them a good pop! (cheap thrills) as is popping cut worms etc. Get out there and have fun!

I was tempted to work in the yard yesterday, but the ground was SOOOO supersaturated, my feet sunk in! I decided to wait till the ground firms up a bit ... :)

I spent about 4 hours in intermittent rain today cleaning up my veggie garden which was long overdue. We took the long planned and dreamed about botanical trip to South Africa in October and I fell hopelessly behind so I was pulling up the soggy remains of tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants, taking down and storing 30 tomato cages, and about the same # of pepper and eggplant protectors, taking down bean poles, retrieving plant markers, cutting back blackberries invading the compost pile. I was totally soaked, muddy, and happy by the end. Of course, when I reluctantly went inside to attend to inside chores the sun came out. ;-( All in all a great day for this type of garden chore. I'm thinking about what I will do tomorrow afternoon maybe cut back grasses and messy perennials, haul big fallen evergreen branches and the Christmas tree down to a pile in the woods, maybe work on the project of trenching to sink more green wine bottles along the edges of a path, but regardless of what I do I will be frustrated that it is way too wet to get into the beds and weed out that bright green but oh so pesky cress which is popping up everywhere. I'm hoping for a few dry days right before a weekend before they take over completely. It's amazing how far behind I got in such a short time. jwww

Hey Judy How did you like S.A.? I was there the latter part of October too but with Ciscoe Morris. A lot of fun! I don't think you are the Judy that was with us were you?

I got a late start in the garden today but am always game to take advantage of "no rain". I look forward to next week. I hope the weather people are right!

Here is a link that might be useful: http://public.fotki.com/BambooMary/south-africa-with-cisco/

I still have snow on the ground from last week. We have had accumulating snow 6 times this winter here in Poulsbo (on a hilltop). Hooray for the 'Hood Canal effect' or whatever it is. So that plus the flood has slowed me down quite a bit from getting a lot of things accomplished. I'm actually finishing the cuttings about two months behind schedule. Some things might not root as well since I put it off so long, but I guess it will be an experiment. Then it will be time to start seeds that require cold stratification. Then before I know it it will be time to start potting up plants again.

Long range computer models have been wafting back and forth on the idea of a major arctic freeze next week. The way these things usually pan out, probably we'll see a little bit colder weather than we have so far this winter, but not the landmark freeze some of us have been so eagerly anticipating.

Oh rats! on the arctic freeze! I guess I still won't get to see my Edgeworthia bloom. Every year it gets nice big buds and then we get a hard freeze and they get burnt! We are getting a fair amount of snow right now almost an inch so far. If it keeps on the way is is now we should have several inches by tomorrow! So much for the nice weather coming up if the ground is covered with snow! Oh well, it is winter after all....

It just snowed really hard here for about 20 minutes and then stopped. I had the same problem with Edgeworthia even in my relatively sheltered garden in Olympia. Better soil and more summer water seemed to help.

One at the Washington Park Arboretum, Seattle, was housed in a cold frame.

"successful in sheltered gardens"

--Thomas, Ornamental Shrubs, Climbers and Bamboos (1992, Sagapress/Timber Press, Portland)

LOL good thing I like this shrub for its foliage and winter form. It is in very nice garden soil and is well established but not so well sheltered. It buds up nicely every year only to get frost bitten..... sigh.

I gave up my Edgworthia 2 years ago and it is now happily blooming in a friend's sheltered Portland garden....I have visiting privileges. jwww

Mine kept getting stem dieback because it wouldn't harden off before we had some early frosts (that was in 2002-3 when it froze at the end of October). I'll try again at my new place - I think I have one in a pot.

The upcoming freeze was looking kind of tame over the last couple days but now it looks quite ominous once again. I think most of us can expect to see teens in colder areas/20s by the water. Then there is really no light at the end of the tunnel with computer models currently hinting at a possible shot of even colder air on Thursday - though of course that could all change. At least if we have another fun convergence zone snow/flash freeze event going into this, it will be on the weekend instead of during an evening commute. Who's ready for winter???

Ian, where are you getting your weather info? The long range forecast from NOAA doesn't sound quite as drastic as what you are predicting, although we could definitely be looking at some chilly temps over the next week. But most of what I saw indicated lows in the mid to upper 20's......not so bad, all things considered. And dry, too, so no snow (I hope!!).

I look at a number of sources. After enough hours of indulging in geekism by looking at raw data I have started to get a feel for what it means. Some of the computer models used by the NWS meteorologists are on the web, such as this loop of the GFS:

http://www.nco.ncep.noaa.gov/pmb/nwprod/analysis/namer/gfs/00/index_slp_mu_loop.shtml
(takes some time to load)

I also read the National Weather forecast discussions which provide some interesting insights on interpreting the model data, found here among other places:

http://www.wunderground.com/DisplayDisc.asp?DiscussionCode=SEW&StateCode=WA&SafeCityName=Bremerton

The funny thing is, it almost seems like those meteorologists are so befuddled by juggling all those computer models, they often seem afraid to bite off on the model solution that seems like the right one based on experience. They are constantly looking at 6 or 7 different computer models, which change in their outlook from run to run, trying to weigh them all to see which make the most sense and present the most probable scenarios. Occasionally all of the computer models will miss something that ends up occuring, such as when an intrusion of arctic air that was supposed to be dry but 'spontaneously' developed a low right over us that spins a bunch of snow in at us off the Pacific - we've seen that one more than a few times.

Then the local newscasts and others pretty much base their forecasts on what the NWS says. The more experienced ones (Channel 5, 13) will sometimes go into greater specificity about a certain event, or bite off on a projection that the NWS is unsure of, and are often correct in doing so. Channel 4 seems to just kind of dumb down the NWS forecast and ends up being less accurate than the others. (Sorry Steve Pool) That's actually true, I did a study on it once.

Oh and... the upcoming cold next week doesn't look quite as severe again now. But with so many variables at play, it's hard to tell just how cold it will be until the thing is right over our heads.