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This is the season of waiting. Waiting for Santa, waiting for warmer weather, waiting for the Christ Child. Can I stuff myself with cookies today? No, I will wait until our next social event to indulge. Waiting to give and receive holiday gifts. Waiting for the first new growth on my plants. Waiting to plant the first seeds for the upcoming year.
Thoughts on gardening do take a back seat this time of year, but the upcoming year is always filled with hope and plans, the reward for that waiting. These thoughts never completely leave me, even in this season of shopping, cookies and celebrations.
On a recent morning, I ventured out in a gentle rain. My last and first plant to bloom in my garden is the hellebore. The ones that bloom at this time of year are commonly called Christmas Roses (helleborus niger); the ones that bloom in early spring are known as Lenten roses (helleborus orientalis).
The first Christmas Rose I checked showed no new growth; the center crown had become covered with too many leaves. I removed the leaves, hoping I will discover some soul-satisfying growth during the next thaw. But the second plant I checked made my gardening soul sing: new buds! They might even open during this thaw!
And so it goes. This gardener’s soul is restless, but also understands the rewards of patience.
If one rushes through life, many rewarding moments will be lost. In this season, there are many soul-satisfying moments that can pass us by too easily: the music playing, the seasonal scents, the excited voices of young children, the silence of a snowfall.
Gifts from gardeners have the potential for inspiring and sharing that patience with others: giving a packet of seeds, along with an offer of assistance and/or guidance to enable success with those seeds and plants; giving a plant well-suited the environment where it will be grown.
Realistic advice can also be a gift: many plants grown in greenhouses often don’t do well in the drier and dimmer environment of our homes. A gift of this type of plant may include this advice to the recipients: “this plant will only look nice for a couple of months; you may well want to get rid of it after that.” People who are less familiar with plants can too easily become discouraged when flowering plants fail to thrive indoors.
Gifts of a foliage plant such as Aglaonema (Chinese Evergreen) will enable much greater success in most home environments. The most familiar form is green and white, but I am enjoying newer varieties that include pink and red tones in the foliage. People too often buy plants based on their attractive appearance in the store, without taking the time to research what it will need in its new home.
Meanwhile, my gardens again rewarded my hope with two flowering winter pansies. This annual plant is put in the ground in fall, flowering sporadically when there is a thaw.
Julie Brocklehurst-Woods has been a Master Gardener Volunteer with Cornell Cooperative Extension of Livingston County since 2002. She enjoys helping all gardeners become successful gardeners, especially helping people identify tools and strategies to prioritize and simplify their gardening tasks. She will answer gardening questions by email: JulieBW48@gmail.com.
"waiting" - Google News
December 21, 2019 at 05:33PM
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Master Gardener: Winter brings on waiting season for the gardener - The Livingston County News
"waiting" - Google News
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