So my boyfriend plays this game, called “Zombie Farm.” He tells me it’s fun. (My own taste in zombie games runs more towards Resident Evil, but y’know.) You have a little farm and you raise zombies on it.
I tell him that I don’t need to play this game, because I already have a garden where things don’t have the good sense to die.
Black-and-Blue Salvia. Not as annual as you might think.
You see that plant there? That’s billed as an annual in my zone. I bought it on clearance thinking I’d get the last flush of blooms out of it, dropped it into the hellstrip alongside the house, transplanted it carelessly elsewhere because I had suddenly realized that rosemary would be good there, and the bloody thing is thriving. It is December. It has put on piles of leaves, and every time we get a cold snap and the top set are wilted, it puts out more. I am highly suspicious of this behavior and may have to kill it on general principle. (It’s not supposed to be invasive in my area, although like many heat-loving plants, you sure wouldn’t want to plant it in Texas. I am still suspicious. I am not sure if I cut off the head or if this will require a stake through the heart, though.)
The problem is that I spent a significant chunk of my adult life in Minnesota, where “winter interest” means “I am interested to see if we will survive the winter!” I worked with people who had lost toes to frostbite. Crocuses don’t even show up until April. Winter to me is the bit where the blanket of snow descends on you and you spend the next eight months unable to determine anyone’s gender under the shell of parkas, scarves, mittens, hats and ski-masks, which can lead to some awkward moments if you’re single.
Living in the Southeast is frequently awesome—nearly everyone has all their toes, sometimes even a few extra if you head towards the mountains—but stuff doesn’t die properly in winter, and it weirds me out!
I am growing beets. In December. There are roses blooming. You can’t tell me that’s normal!
Jerusalem Sage
The Jerusalem Sage here—provides much of the same silver-gray interest as lamb’s ears, without the tendency to EAT THE WORLD—piddled around all year. Come November, suddenly it decided to triple in size. I have no explanation for this. I am the absolute northern tip of its zone, and it shouldn’t like twenty-degree cold snaps at night. Freaks, the lot of ‘em.
Now, if it was just my non-native plants that were going to town, I wouldn’t get so weirded out. I’d chalk it up to the bit where you bring a plant from somewhere else and it’s on a different biological clock and maybe it doesn’t act quite normal. (Hell, I’m pretty sure Knockout roses will flower on the surface of the Moon.)
But no. For every non-native acting too green to be normal, there are three or four natives that think that whole “dormancy” thing is for chumps. And I don’t even mean things like yarrow and Carolina allspice, which are so hardy that they will start throwing leaves at any moment when they are not actively on fire, or the autumn sage, which has secret ambitions to be an evergreen.
The mountain mint, of various species, is a dark green mound with bright green tips. (The supposedly tender variety, which I have up against the house, has rioted across the sidewalk and is acting about as tender as a bear trap.) The inkberry holly decided that now would be an awesome time for new growth. The Redbud That Will Not Die, despite having been killed back to the roots, has put out a set of waving green leaves about an inch from the ground. The various Solidagos are solidagoing. My attempts to transplant the struggling cabbage-leaf coneflower gave it some kind of freaky new lease on life, and now it’s about the size of my head, despite the fact that it shouldn’t leaf out until at least late March. Various hyssops have sent out a cluster of new leaves, and there’s a flat green rosette of starry rosinweed against the ground. The oakleaf hydrangea turned marvelously red, lost its leaves, and now it’s bored and wants to leaf out again.
It’s not just me, either.
Native asters at the Pollinator Paradise garden at Chatham Mills. In December.
I’m fortunate to live in a town with a local co-op, which is attached to a meadery. The meadery keeps bees for honey to make the mead, and the co-op wanted a really eco-friendly garden, so they got a local expert, Debbie Roos, to plant an absolutely extraordinary garden around the place. The Pollinator Paradise garden is utterly fantastic, and I alternately cheer at the sight of it and mope because mine doesn’t look ANYTHING like that. (Give it a few years, and maybe…)
And the asters are blooming there, too. In great force. In December. (According to Debbie, they’re likely to last into January if we don’t get a massive cold snap. So. Weird.) While my New York asters have stopped blooming, my climbing asters are still going strong.
There are honeybees out, too. Both here and at the meadery.
So there you have it, a garden that will not die. I worry that this is ruining me and I will never be able to live anywhere else. If it becomes normal to have plants growing furiously at Christmas, how will I ever cope with a climate where plants stay sensibly underground and sleep through the winter again?
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About Ursula Vernon
Ursula how marvelous to experience such a garden. If we had snow cover and then it melted I would have plants growing under the wonderful insulation…no such luck…My NY aster was gone months ago as any NY plant would be…now they are all frozen shells looking for a blanket of white that is no where to be found. I can tell you they are not a happy bunch in my garden but for all different reasons…here’s to be spoiled occasionally!!
Donna Donabella recently posted..Inner Peace
(Resident Evil fan here too, although I prefer the movie to the game)
I’m a bit further north, in Virginia, and we also have plants that think it’s spring. Spring ephemerals are popping up in the woods, and I have some parsley that refuses to die despite many frosts and is now the size of a small child. That Black and Blue Salvia might come back for you, I’m in zone 7a and mine usually act as a perennial, though not in an invasive kind of way.
Julie recently posted..Mystery Plant ID Help?
we had an aster and a solidago blooming into the first week of december – here in the hudson valley in ny. and it’s been so warm that i have become worried about all the critters that need to be hibernating and are waking up, so far a couple of woolly bear caterpillars and a toad – how much energy does it take to wake up and then re-hibernate and then wake up? and so forth? it can’t be a good thing, neither can the lack of snow cover. it *is* nice not to be shoveling our extra long driveway though!
Always enjoy reading and sharing your articles
Annie Haven | Authentic Haven Brand recently posted..Haven Brand Manure Tea Saves Dying Rose Bush
Ahhh…thanks Ursula! I’ve been edu-mi-cated again!
Had to look up what mead was (and thus learned what a meadery is).
As for oddities in the plant world, my meyer lemon tree started blooming again a few short weeks ago. Of course the fruit is suppose to be ready around January, and it was a poor year for fruit production, so maybe it is feeling sorry for me as I’ll have to buy lemons this year and is giving a poorly timed last ditch effort.
The most important thing I’ve learned about southern gardening is that since there is little in the way of freeze-off to make the plants disappear for a while, your “winter” sabbatical takes place in August when they go into hiding to escape the oppressive heat.
Loret recently posted..Bug Gangs
Y’all are describing the onset of global climate warming as it applies to our gardens. . .
Well, I wouldn’t go that far, in my case. Climate change is having an effect here, certainly—mostly on our water levels in summer—but my issue is that of a transplant from a cold climate to a sub-sub-tropical one more than anything else. Our winter weather always acts like this, apparently.
Ursula Vernon recently posted..I came, I saw, I composted!
Our ‘winter’ sabbatical would be January and February, but December has been autumnal, even with a dusting of snow on the mountain tops mid-month. And the Lamb’s Ears EAT THE WORLD?? Mine are all dead …
Elephant’s Eye recently posted..The First Day of Christmas
“The mountain mint, of various species, is a dark green mound with bright green tips. (The supposedly tender variety, which I have up against the house, has rioted across the sidewalk and is acting about as tender as a bear trap.)”
It’s mint! I warned you! I told you “burn it with fire, it will eat your world in leafy minty freshness!”
You scoffed and have doomed us all!!!!
- Krin
It’s a different genus! A different GENUS, I TELL YOU! *is eaten by mint*
My problem this year is that it has not stayed cold enough to hold things back. We had a very early snow on Halloween weekend, but no snow since and only a few overnight frosts since then. The invasive Sweet Autumn Clematis from my neighbor’s garden is happily taking over my whole garden. It’s green and growing with happy abandon, covering everything in its path. I think I’m going to have to resort to burning it with a blow torch.
Carole Sevilla Brown recently posted..Give a Little Back to Wildlife for the Holidays
Yeah, black and blue salvia an annual? Not so much in Carrboro. I planted one b-&-b three years ago, on the north side of my building, where it gets 3 hours of sunlight a day if it’s lucky. It’s come back both summers since, swallowed half the garden bed, and probably gnaws at the foundations during the dark of the moon.
Well, given that I’m about thirty minutes south of you, now I’m worried! Perhaps I shall have to put a stake through its heart after all…
UrsulaV recently posted..I came, I saw, I composted!