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Stretching the Season

Last week, I had the great fortune to drive from Connecticut to Virginia Beach in a 13 passenger van with 15 year old female soccer players and their very enthusiastic parents. 

 We left Connecticut in a snowy ice storm.  It was such a treat to arrive in Virginia and see green grass, pansies, forsythia, daffodils and many ornamental fruit trees already blooming.  While visiting warmer climates during the winter months, it has always surprised me the southern gardeners don't seem to take advantage of the long growing season they have.  If I had a southern local, I would make every attempt to keep my boxes and containers overflowing from March - November.  Here in New England we stretch our season the best we can with pansies, petunias, ornamental kales/cabbages, allysum, dusty miller, nasturtium, snapdragons and so on.  I would imagine these warmer climates could not only stretch their seasons even longer but also add a lot more flowers to this list such as marigolds, zinnias, dahlias,...  Here, I have seen enthusiastic gardeners putting a few pansies in their windowboxes already in early March.  Imagine what you could fill your containers with if the risk of a nor'easter was almost non-existent?!  I don't see pots of allysum available yet but I have seen dusty miller and snapdragons - I think I will get an early start and put them in the windowbox with some pansies.  My kitchen windowbox is not too big and I will carry it in at night if there's a risk of frigid temperatures.

So little by little the evergreen decorations finally get tossed away; snow gets lifted so the crocus & pansies blooms can be viewed; daffodils, tulips, and lilys shoot up and down - natures own temperature gauge; and forsythia buds swell until finally....they burst into spring!

 3/21/01