Winter is Back With a Vengeance

Back yard as of 2/17/19

So the snow being gone in my last post only lasted 3 days and since then we've gotten 3 snowfalls and the one last night was a big one. We've gotten over 13" of snow so far this month which is twice what we should typically expect this month and on Wednesday we could see another 4-5" seems like every 3 days or so it snows. We are definitely making up for that 1st half of winter being season. Hard to even picture that last year this time I was cleaning the gardens off for spring season with spring flowers coming up and blooming.

Fence to keep rabbits away

Not much going on in the garden this week because of continued winter, however I did come across one issue that has come up. I live in an area that has rabbits and when we have harsh winters like they get very ravenous. Normally we have at least a week between snowfalls and its not usual to have total melt offs in between those snows especially in February. This year we've had snow after snow and its been piling up keeping the grass/their food source covered. When this happens rabbits turn to eating twigs and bark off young trees and shrubs.  This becomes very damaging because those plants can be taken down to nubs and even completely killed. I've notice damage happening to plants rabbits normally would not dare eat which is just a sign of how harsh its been. I knew not long after moving in I had rabbits so I took measures back in November to fence them off. The problem this week though is the snow has gotten so high they are almost completely covered and they can just get over them now to help with this I've had to add more fence over the top to make sure they say out.

The Big Snowmelt

Back yard as of 2/6/19

Okay so we went through that extreme record breaking cold spell with a -20.F low ( first time in 23 years ) and -19.F on my backyard weather station. Then 3 days later the temperatures slowly rose into the 40s and 50s where it remained for 2 days and 2 nights and all the snow melted. It's that simple. We had 13" on the ground Saturday morning and by days end Sunday it looked like the above photo. It was like magic watching it go and was the fastest I've seen that much melt. It felt like maybe spring wasn't too far off, then just as fast as it came we cooled off into the 20s where we have been ever since. It's also looking likely going to get most of that snow back because the forecast shows at least 2-3 snow events hitting over the next week. The good news is average high for February is 35 the bad news is mother nature doesn't care about that and has other ideas!

Daffodil sprouts 2/2/19

Snowdrop in bloom 2/2/19

When the snow melted it reviled not only have the Snowdrops made it through the cold just fine, they were completely unharmed by the polar vortex of coldness. They had the thick snowcover to thank for this, because if they had been exposed to cold without a thick blanket they would have been very sorry. What was interesting though are the Daffodils and Tulips. Back in early January before we got a heaping pile of snow from 3 snowstorms in a row there was only a daffodil or two barely poking out of the ground and no Tulips. Now there are many Daffodils and Tulips coming up everywhere! It looks like about nearly 30% of the bulbs are up and some are as much as 3" tall. Well, I remembered the ground never froze before we got that very first snowfall so apparently they were very happy under the blanket and kept growing never knowing the horror of cold temperature we were experiencing above. Since spring doesn't look like it going to show up anytime soon, it would actually prove very beneficial to get at least 5" of snow back to protect those sprouts again. It doesn't look like we will have any problem getting that and maybe more.