..such a welcome sight for you after such cold weather..... I think I would have stayed in bed all February, with an electric blanket and hot water bottle.... I've never experienced temperatures that cold....

...it can only get better rouge...

Excellent, Rouge - very reassuring! I was very surprised to see the tips of crocus coming up in a very small patch of bare ground next to a huge snow pile. Nice to finally see a few small spots of bare ground, but it will probably be weeks before the entire yard is bare ground. We just broke the record here in New England, for snowiest weather since records have been kept. I'm not sure if all that snow will make for a great wet spring or all the cold temps back in January before snow cover, will make for a lot of missing plants. Not long now, before we all find out how our gardens fared.

Hi PM2: Did we break the record? I missed that dubious good news. I hear there's more snow on the way, so we can dance in the (icy) streets in jubilation. The only sign of spring I see are the golden willow buds and my decimated Japanese Maple. The last few years of growth snapped right off in the middle. I'm trying to heed Ken's admonition ¨Newbies Stay Out of The Garden¨ which applies to old crones as well.

marie/idabean

Hi Marie - Like your new screen name. :-)

Yes, we actually did break the record with 108.6 inches of snow this winter! I did hear that we may get another 6 inches of snow this weekend. Oh joy. I hope they are wrong. My vegetable beds are still frozen, I'm waiting to plant peas.

Sorry about your Japanese Maple, that's a shame. I haven't walked around yet either to even find out what is damaged. I can see Ilex 'Sky Pencils' that were pushed over by snow off the garage roof, that are no longer standing up straight. lol

Glad to see you posting! :-)

Hi Prairiemoon I didn't pick the screen name it just appeared. I don't think I'll take out the maple yet. It's got years of rootgrowth and it may regenerate quickly. Iĺl just have to keep on top of shaping it. I haven't seen many sky pencils that hold their shape well. Arbo-retum practically rigged a girdle around hers. You may have to give yours help to go upright again.

Yes, it is good to see so many familiar and new names. I feel disconcerted every time I open up to this ugly format, though.

Marie, if you want to change the name displayed you can do that in a few clicks.

Go to

1) "Your Houzz" in the upper right corner of your screen

2) On the next page "edit your profile" in the upper right

3a) under "Profile Information" and "First name (publicly displayed)" put in whatever you want to show when you post and while you are there you can add your zone under "About me". Mine (which they filled in after I emailed them about the lack of zone information) reads: "My zone is: z4b-5a NH".

Elsewhere one of the Houzz staff wrote that the zone will appear when you post in the GW section of the forums, but not if you post on Houzz. Since I never go to the Houzz part of the site, I haven't tested that out.

I particularly welcome early bulbs in areas that melt sooner, both the early shoots and the blooms. I have an uninsulated foundation on part of the house, and along the sunny parts of the uninsulated foundation I can see sprouts of reticulated iris and foliage of Colchicum, both of which seem quite frost-proof since it hasn't cleared 25 degrees for several days and is still getting into single digits many nights, not our usual for late March (or even late February.)

Colchicum put out spring foliage, but bloom in early autumn.

Most of the garden is still under at least a foot of snow. I do know that the shrubs under the dump line of the eaves will need to pruned to ground level, but that was planned for and the spireas and Annabelle hydrangeas are fine with severe pruning. I am not sure what the arborvitaes in the large shrub bed will look like, and elsewhere there are a few deciduous azaleas that look somewhat flattened. Our first snow of the year was heavy and wet which then turned to ice, so most things have been entombed since late November even though I did my best to clear off the worst of the snow before it froze on.

I hope that PM2's 'SKy Pencil' and Marie's Japanese Maple recover from this winter!

Finally a border without snow in it and surprise, surprise, daffodil foliage just coming up in spots!

Barb, is that a current photo of Colchicum? It's really up high already.

Marie, glad you are keeping your Maple, I hope that goes well.

Wow, what a lot of clean up to do out there. Boxwoods look horrible. I am going to have to cut them back drastically. Oh well, they'll be small for awhile, but they grow fast and won't need much pruning for a couple of years, if I have to cut them back that far. I'll be surprised if I find one that doesn't need a severe cut back. I can't see them all yet. My two in the front are extremely slow growing, so I hope I don't have to do much pruning on those.

Vegetable beds still frozen.

Marie, and Barb, the Sky Pencil won't be straight as a stick for sure. It looks like they'll have a little curve in them, but that's okay. The potted Sky Pencils I saw at Stonegate had the same kind of shape. They were mature and had a sort of tear drop shape. As long as they remain vertical, so far, I'm okay with them. And they still have some snow at the base, so they may straighten up a little more when all the snow is gone. The dump line of our garage roof, is over the Sky Pencils, that was the problem.

Barb, I gave up on trying to keep the snow off anything. The snow was too deep to get to anything in the back and all the shoveling around the front just piled it all up on everything.

We had to have roofers on the roof this winter and they trampled a Hydrangea in the front, I'll have to cut that one back severely too, but at least it blooms on new wood. I used to have an Annabelle there but I changed it to Madame Emille Mouillere. I see I had Deutzia and Syringa pallibin that is crushed along the back dump line. Not surprised. The couple of Arborvitaes we have look okay.