Keep warm and safe, Melissa. Spring will come eventually, and you will rejoice all the more from having the long wait.

Rosefolly

Know the feeling. My first order from VG arrives today or tomorrow and there is still snow on the ground!!! And I'm in VA, not Maine.

Yeah, demoralising. Too cold to start seeds (although I am carrying on as normal and will probably rue the day) and when I do get down the allotment (where most of my time is spent on my knees) it is much too cold to stand still and concentrate so I have been wafting around with my loppers, poking and snipping at stray branches, in a vaguely meaningful way. As for the horsebox - have ripped most of the cladding so we are basically standing around in the open air, attempting to build window linings. The wood may as well be a million miles away and it is hard to imagine that things are ever going to be any different.
If I manage one task a day, I feel vindicated in going back into hibernation mode (yesterday, it was propping the sweet peas with the snipped salvia branches and popping some primrose offsets in new pots). I did dig out a Penny Lane rose and give it to an allotmenteer who is leaving (my friend, Keith, who I have gardened alongside for the last 10 years - seed sharer and fellow bindweed battler who converted me to potato leaved tomatoes and cavolo nero kale).
My home garden, while tiny, is looking rather well - the high brick walls protect my plants and the new rose growth is a source of constant joy while the white narcissi are taking over where snowdrops left off. Hellebores, chaenomeles and evergreen ferns and epimediums and various spring ephemerals keep up with the greening of the earth while many perennials have lush (if short) growth, waiting to burst forth. Not as bleak as it could be, by a long way....and the greenhouse staging, inside and outside, is filled with seedlings (echinacea, glaucidium, foxgloves, epilobium, cenolophium, peucedanum, thalictrum, chaerophyllum, mimulus, aquilegias, delphiniums, geraniums, aconitum, leeks, and hopeful tomato seedlings still in the propagators). Another desperate year for butterflies (hence the array of larval food plants) - hoping the swallowtails cling on a bit longer (my wood and surrounding fen is one of the last UK sanctuaries for our swallowtails)
Certainly, my day starts later and later (and having never been an early morning type, I am beginning to count a noon rising as almost good enough)
Still got a couple of chunky sci-fi books to take me away from it all.

You are having the March that I had last year. It rained almost every day. This year is the mildest I've seen for many years. I think my white Banksia will bloom well for the first time in ten years. There are a number of buds on other roses which is almost unheard of for March. Because of the dry weather I've gotten more done than I think I ever have by this time of the year. I just hope it doesn't mean a hot summer.

This has been a very schizophrenic winter, more so than usual. We ran ten degrees above normal for much ot it, interspersed with periods of freezing weather. Right now, we have two days of freezing overnight temps. Last year this time we were in the eighties during the day, not sixties. Blooms were close to a month early this year and got wiped out by a freeze. The annuals and perennials don't seem to know what to do. Most of them would be in bloom right now, but they're just sitting there doing nothing. The only ones that don't seem confused are the catchfly and larkspur. We will probably go from this to extremely hot temps, which will do in the annuals. This will be the second spring in a row where the garden was less than successful if that happens.

I wonder (and fear) whether these are the predicted sequelae of global warming where Europe is expected to become colder and wetter and other areas, such as the interior of much of the U.S., hotter and drier. It's beginning to be difficult to keep a positive outlook, although at least it seems that governments are starting to realize that this is a looming and terrifying prospect. There are still measures that can be taken to somewhat mitigate the effect of what is to come, and that's what we need to concentrate on now as much as possible. Meanwhile I do hope that some sunshine will enter your life, Melissa, in the very near future, and that you and your garden will get a much-needed break.

Ingrid