Green Things in the Great White

 We have been living in an arctic tundra.  When we go to town, the roads are melted and the sun is shining but up here on the hill, the temperatures are in single digits and the wind drifts the dry snow until the country roads fill back in.  Our driveway is so thick in ice that we ordered and installed a Bluetooth/WiFi mailbox alarm that lets us know when the mailbox has been opened so we don't waste dangerous trips down the driveway to check.  We are used to being able to hear the mail truck clearly, but this amount of snow absorbs so much sound that the only road noise we hear now is the snow plow barreling along like a freight train shaking the ground.  Indoors it is warm with the south rooms of the house bright and cozy from passive solar heating.  I actually have to dust twice as often or the low winter sun shines through the window at such an angle that we can barely see the image on the TV screen for the reflection and layers of lint.

Preparation for warmer days is already under way.  The first seeds up are the Candy onions.  I have many times grown onions from both plants and sets but this is my first foray into seeding them.  I figured that I could be much more flexible with quantities and save the leftover seeds for several seasons making this route more efficient than either ordering plants or buying sets.  They are in the basement on a heat mat now but in a week or so I will transplant each cell into a larger pot and move them to the workshop with the Coleus cuttings. 

The Coleus cuttings are still doing well with 50F degree air temperature and weekly watering.  Some of the plants on the edges are getting a little pale so I rearranged the pots to see if that helps.  The workshop will have to be raised to 60F when I begin adding warm weather transplants.  Right now I have my tub of Dahlia tubers in there where they keep a steady 48F on the floor under the saw.  When I turn up the heat they need to be moved out, probably to the basement bulkhead, but right now outside temperatures are way too low to make the bulkhead a safe storage spot.

I have my seeding schedule mapped out and room for seven trays of seedlings.  Most people in my town are complaining about seven solid weeks of snow and cold with no break, but for me looking out and seeing the great white tundra is easier on my gardening psyche than mud and grass would be.  Come March when the weather is turning I will feel that the work season is imminent and patience will completely desert me.