Winter in the city
I promised a blog post about my recent vacation in Ft. Lauderdale, but the weather has intervened. An unusually late snowstorm that produced a record amount of snow for this date (ca. 5 inches) shut down the federal government on Thursday and generally pissed off everybody in the Midatlantic region.
Even the evergreen shrubs seem tired of the snow
Fresh snow in the city is usually a beautiful thing, but dammit, we're tired of winter and we want it to go away. Two unusually cold nights in a row didn't help; this morning saw record lows at Dulles (2 degrees) and BWI (6 degrees) airports. So here are a few photos of the snow, along with the same views from warmer times last year, in anxious anticipation of warmer times this year!
Roof deck, March 2015
Roof deck, August 2014
Roof deck view, March 2015
Roof deck view, August 2014
Garden in March 2015 (left), August 2014 (right)
Garden, March 2015
Garden, October 2014
In the photos above, note the single sad windmill palm (Trachycarpus fortunei "Bularian"), which has taken a bad hit for the second winter in a row. It survived and recovered a bit last year, after our coldest winter in 20 years, but not as much as I would have liked. I think this may be the last winter for many windmill palms in our area. Although a handful of palms survived the brutal cold of January 2014 (see Washington windmill palm winners (and losers)), they were badly damaged and weakened. Because of this, some local palm growers protected their surviving palms but I've been determined to see just how tough these palms really are. A warm winter may have allowed them to spring back but we had no such luck, and I'll be truly impressed if my "Bulgarian" comes back again. It will be interesting to see if any unprotected palms at all survive two back-to-back cold winters in our area.
Trachycarpus fortunei "Bulgarian", March 2015
Trachycarpus fortunei "Bulgarian", August 2014
Trachycarpus fortunei "Bulgarian", December 2013, immediately before a devastating winter
Winter can't last forever... can it? The one good thing about winter weather this time of year is that we know it won't last long. We've already had a couple of sunny days, and it's supposed to finally go above freezing today, with even warmer temperatures coming tomorrow. With any luck I'll be seeing crocuses blooming in a couple of weeks. I can hardly wait.
The view from my bedroom window yesterday morning
Dreaming of spring: Crocus tommasinianus, March 2014
Great post. Love the side-by-side pics of the different seasons. Your garden is beautiful. Steve B.
ReplyDeleteThanks, I've been documenting my garden with photos for several years, and it's fun to do these kinds of comparisons!
DeleteNice to see the photos side by side showing the contrast between the seasons. Hope that warmer weather arrives there soon!
ReplyDeleteThanks, we are FINALLY getting some (slightly) warmer weather!
DeleteWe dodged Thursday's snow, though the city did freak out in anticipation with schools closing early. Friday we woke up to nothing but cold temperatures. Here we are not worried about Trachycarpus, mine seems fine. There have been many Sabal palmetto planted about the area, especially at the oceanfront, and most survived last winter, though beaten and bruised. So I don't know if they will be able to stomach two bad winters in a row. Same goes for all of the marginal cycads we have planted at NBG. We caged them last winter and most survived, but not without complete defoliation. We will see what happens this spring.
ReplyDeleteMy Cycas panzhihuaensis survived last winter, as did 2 or 3 (out of about a dozen) planted at the National Museum of Natural History. It will be interesting to see if they made it through this winter. Should be a very interesting spring!
DeleteIt's got to end soon, and hopefully you'll have a beautiful spring and summer as a sort of reward. I would be going mad by now.
ReplyDeleteIf any of my begonias come up, that will be reward enough!
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