With the exception of a freaky 3-day thaw a few weeks ago, it's been cold here since late November. We've had several week-long episodes of single-digit temps and every time I think,"Well, maybe that's the last of it." hahaha What an idiot. In the past 10 days or so we've had 1 day with temps over 15° (it got up to a whopping 28° - felt like a heatwave!) Last Sunday it was -11° when I got up around 5am. Yesterday the high here was 14°, and that was about 6 am. The temp droppped throughout the day and at 5pm was down to 8°. This morning at 4 am it was 4° and right now it's 12°. It was sunny earlier but cloudy & grey now with more snow forecast. O, joy. Either tonight or tomorrow night (can't recall which, and who really cares anymore?) the temp's supposed to go below 0° again with windchills of -25° to -30°. I wish they'd just shut up regarding windchills. Then, this weekend, the weatherguy claims there's a chance of a warmup (possibly skyrocketing to 33°) but, unfortunately, that'll also bring yet another round of freezing rain (our fourth so far this season). I've pretty much given up the concept of actually staying warm. Since mid-November I've bought 600 gallons of gas (3 deliveries @ 200 gallons each). The price per gallon was $2.93, $2.96, and $2.99, respectively. That's a dollar+ more per gallon than it was last year! Un-freaking-believable. My highest-priority for this year is finding a "tighter" house to either rent or buy. I'm betting I find it right after I get everything planted. ;-D Uh-oh, somebody better call me a wah-mbulance!

It's not the temp that kills roses, it's the wind. We once had a winter back in the 80's when it was about ten below with a 30 mph wind. I lost every single flower, even the daisies. Grafts die, too. Rosa multiflora has been tested to zone 2 and that is why it has been used a lot as a rootstock. I have tested all kinds looking for cane hardiness, but none matches my Hallie's Rose, which goes to 8-10 feet and never loses its canes. I think it may be similar to High Country Banshee, sold by High Country Roses, which they found in a graveyard in Denver. I would like to send Hallie's Rose somewhere to be tested for its parentage. I checked out Hurdalrosen but they say its scentless. Hallie's Rose is highly scented. Those Canadian Explorers can be disappointing. Two feet plants with pretty boring flower mops on top.

Bon, Remember that onions (and all the other types of alliums that we grow for food) are biennials. This means that normally they grow the first season and flower at the end of the second season. Their first season occurs when the seed is grown to transplant size and then the transplants are pulled, bundled and shipped to consumers. Once the consumer plants the onion transplants in the ground, the plants begin their second season. What should happen in the second season is that the roots grow, the leaves grow and elongate, more leaves form, etc. If nothing abnormal interrupts this second season, you will get harvestable bulbs, normally in the June-July time frame, though sometimes I have short-day types ready for harvest at the end of May. If you were to fail to harvest those bulbs, the leaves would die back, and then when growth resumed, they'd flower. The flower stalk would split the bulb and it would be of poor quality. If something unusual interrupts the second season, the onions often bolt and send up a flower stalk. I won't say it happens to 100% of them. Sometimes a few bolt, sometimes most of them bolt. Once that happens, they won't bulb up because they are putting all their energy into producing seeds. The something unusual that interrupts their second season could be something as simple as a few consecutive nights with temperatures below 45 degrees once the onions have at least 5 leaves, but also could be very heavy rainfall, overfertilization early in their growth cycle or anything else (like being transplanted again) that disrupts the normal growth that began to occur after you put the plants in the ground the first time. Each variety responds to interruptions in different ways. Some bolt. Some seem to stall and just not grow well. Some seem to grow fine and don't bolt but produce very small onions instead of the nice big bulbs one expects. There are so many variables involved that you cannot predict with certainty what will happen. DIfferent varieties respond differently, and even different plants of the same variety can respond differently, but when you transplant onions a second time once their second season has started, what happens most of the time is that you do not get a good crop. Must you move them? Can't they just grow where they are now and then next year you plant that new crop of onions in the new, enlarged garden area? To clarify, they tolerate being pulled from the ground, being shipped and being put into the ground a second time because they are biennials. If you then try to move them again, you're treating them as perennials. That interruption in their growth can cause split bulbs, rerooting, bolting, etc. Will transplanting kill them? No. Onions are tough and can survive being moved repeatedly at times, but the tradeoff is you likely won't get the bulbs you want. If you want onions that you can move around that way, you need to grow perennial bunching onions----but they give you little onions, not great big bulbs. In the spring, I often take whatever onion bulbs from the previous harvest still are in storage and are sprouting green leaves, and I plant them in the garden. They'll give us beautiful flowers (because they are in the third season at this point) but they won't give us big bulbs. Usually after they flower, the bulbs will have split into many pieces. I have left those ornamental onions in the ground and often had onions come back, grow and bloom for several years in that location, but I've never tried to harvest them. I'm not sure if the new onion plants each year keep coming from those split bulbs or if they are from seeds that drop from the flower heads after they are through blooming. I like the allium flowers because they attract tons of tiny beneficial insects. By attempting to move onions that already are happily growing, you're disrupting their natural cycle and there's normally a price you pay for that. Dawn

The reliable weather sources here in our region hedged from the moment the models started showing the Arctic cold front, and said repeatedly that the wintery precip was very unlikely to make it this far south. Even when the NWS forecast had us at a 20-30% chance of precip, and likely wintery precip at that, our temperatures still were going to be barely at or below freezing, so I felt like we would be okay down here. Incredibly, we still have patches of sleet here that haven't completely melted from the last storm, although they are shrinking in size every day and now remain only in really shady areas. I hope we have reasonably decent weather for the rest of the month so everyone can just enjoy the holidays and stay safe. Scott, I do think our local electric co-op was concerned about the prospects for another ice storm at the end of the week. Their employees or sub-contractors were out in our neighborhood yesterday,clearing areas beneath and beside power lines where anything was growing that could be a threat to the power lines if icing occurred. Ever since either Sat or Sun, our local forecast has trended warmer and warmer, so I haven't been too worried. I agree that the models do an amazing job of predicting the general trends. Just look at how often they can warn us 6-10 days out that a tornado outbreak is likely in a specific area on a specific day or days, and indeed, somewhere in the area they've highlighted, tornadoes generally do occur on those days. I think it is particularly helpful that they can issue PDS advisories days in advance when the models indicate a Particularly Dangerous Situation could develop. We are nice and warm down here, Scott. While the nights may be cooler than we'd like, our highs this week are in the 60s and may hit the 70s for a day or two. I'm guessing y'all must not be quite as warm there as we are here. Unfortunately, with warmer air temps in winter and lots of dormant and somewhat dry vegetation, our winter fire season may be starting early. We had a relatively small grass fire (maybe a half-acre) Sunday, another one yesterday that threatened a barn and vehicles before firefighters arrived on the scene and extinguished the blaze quickly, and 4 more grass fires overnight. With some windy days this week, we're likely to have more little fires. I think we are too wet overall for them to get big and move quickly.....and hope I am right about that. After the two rain/ice/sleet/snow storms we've had in the last few weeks, the ground is so muddy that firefighting brush trucks are getting stuck in the mud at some of the fires we've been having. Normally the bad part of the winter wildfire season doesn't start until February or March. I'm hoping for a quiet winter, both in terms of weather and wildfire.