Gardeners tend to suffer during the short days of winter. How do you cope? What is your secret escape that gets you through until the spring equinox?
Since moving to southern California I have felt so lucky to avoid the deepest darkest and coldest days of winter. How dark? Used to be, Thanksgiving on until the weather turned, I'd want to hibernate along with the critters, go dormant like the plants. Hide in bed with the covers pulled over my head, yup. A person can't really do that, but it had a certain shall we say appeal to it.
Here in sunny SoCal, that kind of full scale escape is really not necessary. Instead, we have a bit of rain and the occasional mudslide, some cloudiness in the morning, and out into the far distance there's snow glistening on the mountain peaks. Driving along the I-10 freeway, we glimpse panoramic white peaks behind the Staples Center. That's a comfortable distance, that space between me and the snow. I have no idea if it is hot or cold there, it's just ... a postcard.
What do I see out my window? Palm trees at eye level, and the tips of pencil shaped cypresses. Bougainvillea flailing about with hot pink flowers. A neighbor's rose, backdropped by swimming pool blue. A nice ultra pink hybrid tea -- precisely two blooms peek around the corner of his house. They are postcard perfect, too.
It's time to prune hybrid tea roses in Southern California, so hop to it! While you are out there, enjoy the bedding schemes full of pansies, snapdragons, cyclamen and sweet alyssum, the ranunculas and anemones, primroses galore and myriad succulents abloom beside run of the mill, common birds of paradise. (run of the mill!!)
I cheated on beating cabin fever -- ditched the cabin and up and moved. Extreme, but effective. Would you do that? What do you do to beat hte winter blahs?
