While we in the Pacific Northwest have been experiencing a warm and dry spring and posting about our gorgeous green gardens and copius blooms, my niece Alison, who lives in Wasilla sees this when she looks over her front garden.
Although the snow finally melted, night temperatures are still in the 20's. Alaska is experiencing the coldest spring on record. Read more about it here.
Besides the conifers, the only green Alison could find in her garden was in this picture. Hooray for tough as nails Bergenia!
You can imagine that this is having a rather deleterious effect on the mental well being of gardeners in the area. Thinking to cheer herself up a bit, Alison visited a nearby nursery which had put out some of their perennials. After looking at the offerings though, she felt that she already had a sufficient representation of this color palette in her garden and left empty-handed.
On May 18th, this was the view from her front door.
Moose, it's what's for dinner!
I guess it's true what they say in the song, "When it's Springtime in Alaska, it's 40 below!"
Meanwhile inside the house, the corn and tomatoes are nearly four feet tall and plants started from seed are filling every available window space!
It's too cold to put the newly hatched chicks out with the other chickens and ducks because, even being in a shelter with a heat lamp, when temperatures are as low as they currently are, the chicks cannot be kept warm enough.
Anyway, when I look out my kitchen window and see this
Comedian Sam Kinison used to advise starving people in desert areas to simply "GO WHERE THE FOOD IS!" It is in that spirit that I advise my temperature impaired (climate challenged?) relatives to MOVE WHERE THE WARMTH IS! Seriously though, sorry about your extended winter! This probably wouldn't be a good time to say that I turned the furnace off for the season quite a few weeks ago, right? Just checking.
Well, our spring here in the UK hasn't been quite that cold, but it seems like there's been odd weather all over the place this year. I hope it warms up soon for your niece and her plants aren't affected. Love the photo of your garden pond with the Magnolia out. So pretty!
ReplyDeleteYou've had quite a cold winter this year and your spring not as warm as usual! What strange weather. Glad you like the photo of the pond with the magnolia. I'ts one of my favorite views from my kitchen windows.
DeleteI once knew a girl that moved here from Montana. She phoned her parents and said "You don't have to live there! You, too, could be warm!" ;) The photos of the snow and those poor little baby chicks makes me appreciate even our super-hot summers. I have always wondered how people in zone 3 garden. Now I know - they garden inside!
ReplyDeleteIn the north, the hours of daylight increase dramatically so plants put on an incredible amount of growth in a short period of time. Gardeners can also be outside working nearly 24 hours a day. It's a matter of itensity & usually gadeners there are happy to have a break when winter comes around. (No gardening takes place in frozen ground.)
DeleteI couldn't do it. We are so spoiled in the northwest! I love your pond--it's so beautiful.
ReplyDeleteI don't think I could move back. It's beautiful though!
DeleteI know exactly how your relatives must feel. I felt like that the whole winter. The winter was so long here this year, but now it's warm, more than 20 Celcius degrees. Let's hope the spring will arrive to Alaska as well!
ReplyDeleteThere is a feeling of kinship among gardeners who live in the north! I'm glad your temperatures are so warm now!
DeleteOur heat had been turned off too, until the last couple of days, it's gotten cold! And tomorrow's high...only 55, burr...! Still I'm not complaining (really)...we've got it good!
ReplyDelete55? Yikes! Haul the long underwear back out:) We really are lucky!
DeleteI can commiserate with your poor niece, and not just because we share a name (same spelling too, which is unusual). Her view of her garden is exactly the same view as my garden back in Massachusetts after the winter. Brown, dead sticks and dirt. I never could understand the emphasis on winter interest that I would read about. With everything covered in snow for 3 or 4 months, there is no such thing. I too am so happy to live here in the PNW.
ReplyDeleteThat is a great view of your pond. I have a smaller concrete leaf. Maybe I'll do something similar, not necessarily in my stream, but somewhere out in the garden, if you won't accuse me of being a copycat. As they say, Steal from the best.
I'm pretty happy that you live here, too!
DeleteIt's not stealing,it's borrowing. Besies, the other Alison gave me the idea to use the leaf that way over the phone one day.
Suffice it to say that Alaska won't be on my list of possible locations for a retirement home. Spring has been cool here this year but nothing like that. In fact, I'm thoroughly enjoying the cooler than normal spring weather. Everything is blooming longer and the foliage plants are absolutely glowing. With any luck summer will be cooler too.
ReplyDeleteAlaska's beauty is truly awsome, no matter the season but the winters are a little too long and snowy for me too. You could always retire in the Pacific Northwest, gardeners' paradise!
DeleteSurprising that people there still feel the urge to garden...it must be primal.
ReplyDeleteSummer is a magical time in Alaska! Gardens grow so quickly with all of the light that it's difficult to think of not gardening. The town of Palmer was started as an agricultural settlement. Before the aeroplane and that handy highway, Alaskans had to garden if they wanted to eat. There's only so much hunting and gathering one can do.
DeleteI don't envy you, ducklings are a high maintenance item, what with all the water splashing. But I do like duck eggs so much more than chicken eggs, I'll probably do it again someday. Right now I just have 2 ducks and 5 chickens. Do you raise all the poultry for eggs or meat?
ReplyDeleteI can sympathize with the Alaska gardeners, I lived in Denver 6 years and had a lot of snow and unseasonable storms. But the high altitude made the sun more intense, as you say regarding latitude, so I had the best winter squash crop ever there, and great tomatoes.
Alison loves ducks and started with them. The chickens came later. She raises them both for eggs and meat although the ducks started as pets. She has an incubator and simply places the eggs from her chickens there to hatch for the following year. She's also giving some of the chicks to friends as well.
DeleteThey are just MUCH tougher than we are, Peter! I don't know what I'd do if I ever had to move back and endure the horrid, humid summers of the Midwest again...and the winters...ugh...I haven't had to experience cold since I moved to Portland!
ReplyDeleteBecause the Midwest is your home and Alaska mine, I think we both enjoy visiting but realize that we're too spoiled here to ever go back permanently. There are things about Alaska that I miss though.
DeleteYou have a beautiful view from the window!! But I do feel sorry for your niece, not a great view at the moment, the moose is cool though!!! :)
ReplyDeleteThanks! I feel sorry for my niece as well. On the positive side, her garden is fenced now so the moose don't eat her trees.
DeleteAt least they can grow good meconopsis in Alaska! Love this post,and your blog in general.
ReplyDeleteYes they can! And fabulous delphiniums and peonies. Thank you for the compliment Linda, it means a great deal to me coming from someone whose garden, blog, and intelligence I admire!
DeleteThat is genuinely terrifying. We had an usually late spring in New England and here in Michigan, too, but nothing this extreme. It does appear to have been a late and cold spring in many places, though. In our original home town in one of the mildest and sunniest corners of Germany, where spring normally gets going in late February or early March, they kept getting frosts into April, and even now snow showers are in the forecast for the weekend.
ReplyDeleteThe weather seems to be getting more unpredictable lately all over the planet. Crazy!
DeleteOK, I guess I'll stop complaining now. I hope things look up for your sister and other Alaskans soon. And the view out your window is very lovely.
ReplyDeleteYou needn't stop complaining, it's kind of fun and as my niece always says, "Just because you have a brain tumor and I only have a headache doesn't mean that I don't hurt too." Thanks.
DeleteSeeing the Alaskan spring made me shudder, brrrr.....
ReplyDeleteAnd was nice to see yours! Love the pond :)
This record-breaking cold spring/extended winter is not making Alaskans very happy! Thanks, glad you like my little pond.
DeleteIt's very disturbing... This spring is very strange everywhere in the world.
ReplyDeleteI read this in Kew Gardens in London: Buds bursting one week earlier because of a global warming. It's warmer in one part of the planet, and it's cooler in another part... In my garden, I also see an early blooming.