Ah! Spring in Minnesota; black snow, playing pothole slalom and the smell of hot asphalt in the air. It's a little early this year. I'm betting on one more blizzard, about April. Meanwhile, those of you in more southerly latitudes are posting and tweeting; the crocuses are blooming! the robins are singing! yeah, yeah, yeah, blah, blah, blah.
Me? I'm excited because I just saw a smidgen of green at my door, just in time for St. Patrick's Day. A leaf! Maybe more. The snow is melting, even the sedimentary layers on my deck that tell the story of early storms in October through bigger and better by December, until now. Other than soggy pine straw and anemic patches of lawn this is the first hopeful happening in my garden so far.
When I planted the 7 Tiarellas (Foam Flower) at the back-but-really-front door, it was a troublesome site, backed by a stone wall, probably 10 inches deep and 8 feet long, and not only narrow but a north-facing exposure. The variegated grasses had done a pathetic backwards stair step in height due to the increasing lack of light as you reach the door. Bare mulch or some kind of rock was the non-plant solution, but I thought I'd give it another try.
In spite of their cutesy name, "Sugar and Spice", the tiarellas called out to me in the nursery towards the end of the season. I love the dramatic leaf shape, deeply cut and bright green with a wine-red blotch for more interest. Even better the pink and white frothy blooms of this native cultivar attract butterflies, while giving some height to the ground-hugging clumps of foliage. Their shade tolerance helped with the difficult place they were planted. Supposedly distasteful to rabbits, squirrels and deer, I think I'm going to like this perennial more and more.
I harrumphed when I read that the foliage is evergreen. I thought, yeah, and how does that work? But there it is peeking out of the snow, among the gelatinous mess of mulch and rotted plant matter, ready to roll. To think they have been sitting there all winter long, hidden.
But that isn't the only thing showing from under the snow. A few ghosts of holidays past, long buried by the Christmas Eve blizzard, have revealed themselves in recent days.
Remember the blue pumpkin from my Halloween posts?
One of the carolers that sat on the front porch by the Spruce Tips Arrangement the had disappeared in the storm.
