Still 14 inches of snow; third day of just over 40°F since January. Am wondering how long to wait until digging through the snow and re-planting a Rosemary Russet grafted last year.
Must be time to look in the basement and see if the tuberous begonia is waking up, and bring out the amaryllis to give a drink. Might bloom before Easter if I do!
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Tried some fig grafting today, mostly cleft grafts but I did try a chip bud. Base trees were a VdB, Deanna, Mission, and a volunteer fig tree. Scion was mostly Black Madeira and Peter’s Honey. Fingers crossed that at least some of the BM take.
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Laid out in the sun today for the first time since October. . .man did that feel great!
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You must have covered that tree or it bloomed after Monday night. We only got down to 23° and my blooming trees all look rusty.
It had buds with just a tiny bit of white showing. My trees with blooms look very very sad…
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How perfect is that!!!
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Moose here too:
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My Bruce looks gorgeous, too, after 24 degrees then 21 the next night, in early bloom.
I think Bruce may just be really good with freezes! I got a lot of fruit last year after two nights in the very low 20s. He was in fuller bloom then.
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Same thing here in Spokane Mark. Snow and cold pushing them down into town.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://m.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DbSzDHFPb_2E&ved=2ahUKEwjszt3IhvbgAhX3JDQIHcSsDAUQjjgwDHoECAQQAQ&usg=AOvVaw39Y_T4CsReMivqcj17QmLB&cshid=1552168787418
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On Thursday, I did my bench grafts with the scions and M7 rootstocks that I got at the grafting seminar from last week. I grafted Enterprise, Honeycrisp and Mollie’s Delicious. After I wrapped the unions with tape, and the wood in wet paper towels, they went in a bag and into the closet. Hope they take.
And today, I cut off some scion wood from my Suncrisp and Macoun trees for some possible bridge grafting next month, or whenever the bark starts slipping. I didn’t go out until 2 o’clock to get the mail and cut the wood, and of course, it started raining. We got some lightning and thunder for about half an hour, and it’s still raining now, and will be for another 3-4 hours. What a surprise. 
We came to San Diego (Rancho Penasquitos) to see some friends. This was growing in my friends back yard. We don’t have these in Lubbock.
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When we left the house today for our walk it was in the single digits, but the sun was clearing the mountain and it promised to warm up quickly. In fact, it was just like yesterday and the day before.
But today was different in that today everything is waking. We heard our first song sparrows, downy woodpecker was drumming, chickadees were noisier than usual, flickers were calling. The house sparrows are already twitterpated and we heard house finches. Cottonwood trees are beginning to open leaf buds, and even a few maples are swelling.
So it may be cold and we may still have big berms of snow all over town, and yes, the river is still frozen clear across, but spring is definitely trying to get started. Dern good thing, too!
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That is the neighborhood I live in! Small world.
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I’ve noticed that too. It makes me eager for spring! I want to be working with my plants. I see robins now also. They do have the angry look, like why are we here so early, lol!
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Transplanted a couple seedling peach trees today. It was a heck of a lot of work with the ground still being partially frozen, but spring is coming fast and if I waited any longer I wasn’t sure I could do it before they started leafing out. These volunteered in the garden in 2017, and I had my first ever successful stone fruit grafts on them last spring.
Scions for these came from several generous growingfruit.org members. Huge thank you to everyone that has donated wood!
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Do you have a hardpan soil? what makes the taproot terminate like that?
These were volunteers that sprouted out of the compost I put on my raised garden beds. Where they grew, there is about 8" of really dark, friable, compost rich, awesome soil sitting on top of the native soil. I’m not surprised the roots explored out instead of down.
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We saw our first robins this morning.
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So I get the notice that my new nect shipped today from Bay Laurel. Gonna be a while til the ground thaws