Today Is the Beginning...

...of the rest of my garden. We've been enjoying temperatures in the 50s, which is not normal, but as people, we love it. "I could take this all the way to spring," you hear. College kids run around in shorts and sandals. I once had a patient who came into the office in sandals in the middle of winter. Every winter. Didn't matter if there was snow on the ground or not. He just hated wearing shoes, and sandals were a compromise.

We've also had more than our share of rain, and I wish it would stop. It's not only depressing (it should be snow!), but the ground is saturated and I see water laying in low places that I've never seen before. I worry about the bulbs. With the warm temperatures, some of them are confused and have started growing. The dutch iris are over a foot tall! The flowering quince has buds all over it and even new green leaves. When the deep freeze eventually comes, and it's probably not all that far off, I worry that the bulbs will become encased in ice. Will that hurt them? I don't know enough about it to know. I'll have to research that.

I remember the winter of 1982. Jenna had been born in September, and I was getting ready to return to work part-time after a three-month maternity leave. On the first of December, I remember hanging clothes out to dry on the clothesline and noticing the dandelions blooming in the yard. And when Christmas day got here, it was 64°, a new record, and warmer than it was in San Jose, California, where my visiting high school girlfriend lived. But I was busy raising two little girls and the plants and bulbs had to survive without my concern. I'm sure they were fine, and they probably will be fine this year, too.

Inside, the 'Piquant' amaryllis is bursting at the seams. In just a couple of days, it will begin unfurling its flags of orange, green and white and the winter show will begin. I love amaryllis. My husband doesn't. Oh, he likes them when they're at their peak, but when the show is over, he'd be happy if I'd throw them out. He likes constant bloom out of his flowers. And he thinks amaryllis are too tall. I would be just as happy if they weren't as tall as they were too, because last winter, 'Red Lion' got top-heavy, fell over, and the glass pot landed on my digital camera. That was an expensive mishap.

But amaryllis help get me through the cold, gray days of winter, as do my many foliage plants. Last winter, I remarked if spring didn't come pretty soon, we would have to build on an extra room for the plants that I couldn't resist buying every time we went to Walmart. I was antsy to get outside and dig in the dirt.