Michelle, what kind of book is it? Is it a mystery or novel or possible a coffee table book about flowers?

Sammy

I'm interested in what people have to say about this! I get really anxious for something, anything to use as a cut flower/bouquet in my house (technically 7a but I garden like a 7b) in early spring. This year the very earliest things I had were late March or early April and were bolted collard blooms (yellow and delicate), purple vinca blooms, and a grape hyacinth or two in the yard. Thanks for the book recommendation Dragonfly Hollow!

For late winter and early spring I generally have pansies, snapdragons, ornamental alliums, Dutch hyacinth, Dutch iris, dianthus (the dianthus I have is perennial, but some varieties function more like annuals). daffodils, violas, dusty miller and, some years, ornamental cabbage and kale. As early spring turns into mid-spring, I have larkspur, sweet alyssum, irises and oriental poppies. How well any of these perform in a given winter and spring is highly variable depending on what sort of winter temperatures we have had. Some years we have very cold nights, down close to zero, and I can lose some of the above plants if I don't cover them up with heavy duty frost blankets on those very cold nights. Other years we rarely dip down much below freezing and the winter flowers thrive. Most of my flowers are in raised beds that stay slightly warmer than grade-level soil and are in an area where surrounding plants provide a good windbreak that shelters them from strong north winds. With the daffodils, I have several different varieties. Some of the earliest ones bloom in February and some of the later ones don't bloom until late March or early April, so we have a prolonged show of daffodils spread out over a month or two depending on what the weather is doing. Some herbs also make it through the winter here, and some of them flower in spring. My most cold-hardy and reliable herbs are parsley, lemon balm (it freezes, but regrowth appears very early), chives (onion chives flowers are purple and garlic chives have white flowers) and catmint. All my winter/spring flowers except for the daffodils, hyacinths and ornamental alliums are planted inside a fenced area that excludes bunnies and deer. Otherwise, there would be no flowers because the wild critters eat them all.

Some veggies provide wonderful winter color too, among them them mustard, Swiss chard, collards, kale and spinach. Lots of frilly lettuce varieties are very ornamental as well, especially the red-leaved ones. Sometimes they freeze back in very cold weather, but normally put out new growth soon thereafter.

Sammy, yes, it is a book about flowers. :) Although I love a good mystery, during the heat of summer (and the dead of winter, too) I tend to read books about gardening. The author shows how he has year-round interest in his garden, and I thought, hey, I want that, too.

Kate, Dawn has given us a list of flowers and fillers for our early spring table arrangements. And you're welcome on the recommendation. The photos will take your breath away.

Dawn, thank you so much! I'll be making out my list, and in the next few weeks when the heat moderates and the rain returns (Oh, let it be soon!), I'll get to work. In late summer I'm always dreaming about some other season of the year. It's usually fall, but this year I jumped ahead to next spring.

Michelle

Michelle, I agree....let it be soon! We are at 60 days with virtually no rainfall and I am really getting cranky about it. My poor garden looks awful even though I did my best to irrigate it in July and August. I've only watered it once in September and if rain doesn't fall this week, the garden is toast. It just doesn't make sense to keep pouring lots of water onto it when we're already in moderate drought. Now, if rain returns, I'll be a very happy camper and I'll be out there carefully weeding (venomous snakes have been plentiful since the spring and early summer flooding) and seeing what made it through the dry spell as well as what did not.

I usually don't start dreaming about next year until fall or early winter, but this year, once it got hot and dried out, I started dreaming about this coming winter....like, back in late July. Sometimes that garden dreaming gets us through the dry parts of the summer when everything seems fairly hopeless.

Dawn

Dawn, last summer we were completely restricted from using our hoses, so when the rain barrels were empty, I dragged buckets from the showers, and the sinks, and the wash. So even though the rain dried up this summer, I am in a much better place than last summer. The heat just wears on a body, week after week. So when I think it's just too hot, I think back to 2011 and wonder how we all made it through. And knowing that fall will come (it's just around the corner), makes it all the easier.

Miraje, thanks for reminding me about the phlox. My mother always had it (don't know why she doesn't anymore), and it was a mound of pepto-colored flowers when nothing else was blooming. It never failed to make me smile (Mom has always gardened in technicolor).

Michelle

Michelle, I agree that 2011 was truly horrible. We were out fighting wildfires day and night and were living on Gatorade, bottled water and whatever food I could grab in a hurry and take to fires. Forget watering the garden....I was watering firefighters. It was the worst summer ever with more firefighters sick from the heat than you can even imagine, including me. It ruined me for gardening because once you've had heat exhaustion or heat stroke, your body cannot tolerate heat the way it once did. After a lifetime of being very careful to take care of myself out in the heat, I blew it that summer----not from carelessness, but just because the demands for assistance at fires were so high and I couldn't ignore them. Nowadays I no longer can stay out and work in the garden for as long as I want....I have to come indoors before it gets too hot, which cramps my style and makes me cranky, but I do it anyhow. I don't want to ever get too overheated again.

This should have been an easier summer than it has been. We've gone 61 days now without receiving 0.25" of rainfall on any one day. At our house, our total rainfall in that 61 days is 0.13", meaning our dry spell here this summer has been more prolonged than our worst dry spell in 2011. What has saved the trees, at least, is that we had roughly 54" of rainfall this year (our annual average is 39") before it stopped raining. Our upper level soil moisture is 0.0 in the upper few inches of soil, but there is good soil moisture a couple of feet down. Our Keetch-Byram Drought Index at the present time is almost as high as it was during the worst of 2011. In 2011, I understood what was going on as the drought developed throughout the year....even back in the winter and spring as we headed into summer, so watching it was like seeing a train wreck coming.....This summer's Flash Drought has been harder to fathom because it came out of left field so abruptly, beginning while we still had roads and fields under water from the flooding. On the last day that it rained, we had no idea it was "never" going to rain again for the next couple of months. If we had, we probably would have enjoyed the flooding more than we did.

It is 102 degrees here today and just so danged hot, and there have been fires in the area, but not in our fire district. (Knock on wood!) The cold front is supposed to come through here overnight and to bring us blessedly cooler temperatures and rainfall. I can't wait, and I'm gonna be one mad gardener if the rain misses us again, although I'll still enjoy having highs in the 80s or lower 90s instead of in the 100s.

Our next door neighbor in Ft. Worth had the old hardy neon pink-flowered phlox commonly referred to as thrift. I loved hers, but I didn't have luck with it in our blackland prairie clay (right next door to us she had a much sandier soil), and I've never planted it here. We do have the native phlox that blooms in spring here. It lives happily in the bar ditch down by the road, where presumably it gets enough moisture from rain runoff to keep it happy....and Tim isn't allowed to mow it until it has finished blooming. On upland areas, we stay too dry for the native phlox to thrive, so I have to make sure we leave it alone and don't mow it back too early in the one area of our property that has enough moisture for it. It was gorgeous this year in April, but drowned in May's 25.5" of rain.

Dawn

Well, Dawn, it's trying to rain and the temperature has dropped twenty degrees. Fingers crossed for a wet and cool fall. There was a grass fire near here on HWY287 today, so I know we need it. I hope you get lots this go around.

Michelle

Michelle, We got rain. It hasn't been a huge amount, but it should help keep the plants happy for a few days, and maybe we'll have fewer fires. This year's number of fires is nothing compared to 2011 so far, but there's been more than we expected after receiving so much rain in spring and early summer. It is just astounding to go from flooding to drought in less than two months. I hope y'all got a lot of rain. We have a little over 0.60" and light rain still is drifting across the area. (And, our fire pagers went off a few minutes ago for a tractor fire, so you know......rain doesn't solve everything, does it?) I'm enjoying the cooler temperatures more than the rain, to be honest. It is so nice to not be roasting in the heat for once.

Dawn

So glad you got at least some rain, Dawn. This has been a wonderful summer for us, with plentiful rain and cool temps through much of July and August. And last night we got another 2".

To add to the list of spring blooming plants, don't forget the shrubs. I have started over 20 forsythias from the original one that my mother brought from our house in Washington over 40 years ago. I have my grandmother's flowering quince which blooms reddish orange about the same time and then I also have several of my grandmother's baby's breath spirea, which blooms with small white flowers shortly after the forsythia and quince. The lovely thing about these shrubs is that you can cut the stems about 3 weeks before they would open outside and force them inside. Then there is the old fashion lilac--also from my grandmother--and the Jane Magnolia--which I bought for 5 dollars from a clearance rack at WM several years ago.

In the bulb category there is Ipheon or star flower, which blooms with the daffodils. Tulips aren't reliably perrenial but you sometimes get lucky. I have a clump of long stemmed large white ones that have bloomed for over twenty years in my front rock garden. At it's best it had ten stems, but last year only 4.

Candytuft and pink oxalis bloom at the same time in my sunny garden. In the woods the cammasia blooms about the same time as the tradescantia and woodland phlox. These are all ephemerals, dying back after they bloom so are better in an out of the way spot. Round lobe hepatica is another wildflower that blooms very early. In a dry year the foliage dies back but last year and this it has lasted all summer. And don't forget jack in the pulpit, another early blooming wilding. Another ephemeral.

Every time I hear you speak of the drought of 2011, I remember that we had flooding in April and May--24 inches in those two months alone. Then the drought hit in June and July--less than a couple inches total for those two months. But in August we got 8 inches. The pears that set in spring and had so much water early were plentiful in early October. This was on a tree that my dad had given up on years before and hadn't borne for over 10 years. It and one old apple were all that was left of an orchard that had been fenced in for cattle pasture. The cattle laid in the shade and pooped under both for several years. I think that and the rain helped bring on that bumper crop of pears and apples in 2011. That and the fact that the blooms didn't get frozen out that year. 2012 and 13 were much worse for us than 11. 3 months of drought each summer following low rainfall in the spring both years. Then 2014 and 15, absolutely wonderful with plenty of rain and cool temps, especially this year.

I miss my forsythias from the old house and wish I had brought them with me when we moved. The new owners ripped out every single tree and shrub I planted there. I figured they wouldn't keep the vegetable garden, but what did the shrubs and trees ever do to them?? Sheesh.

We have the flowering quince and spirea here as well. They bloom around the same time as the phlox.