My Half Acre of Paradise

Wow, our weather is really volatile lately! We just got a great snowstorm starting last night, and we have about 8-9 inches on the ground now. I went out this morning to shovel my driveway, and the neighbors were all out with their four-wheeler ATVs with snowplow blades. I got to use one to do my driveway. Fun! It’s nice to get this kind of big snowstorm on a weekend, rather than on a commuting day! It’s supposed to stay just below freezing all week, so perhaps the snow will stick around. It would be nice to have a good white Christmas.

We’ve now had about a week with weather over 40 degrees, and the last two days have been almost 60! It’s been a nice break, since it was in the 20s for almost a week before that. We had snow and ice that didn’t melt off our driveway for a while, but it’s all gone now. But there’s a cold storm coming tonight, with rain turning to snow over the weekend. It’s really fluctuating a lot lately. I just looked back at weather.com’s tracking of last month’s temps, and we had quite a few days in the 60s. The ski resorts are open in the mountains, but I wonder if they have good snow.

I saw an AP article the other day saying the melting of Arctic ice this year was much, much faster than anyone predicted. One scientist in the article said we could get to a tipping point where all the ice melts in a decade. That may be hyperbole, and I’ve not heard that claim before, but I have to admit I haven’t studied this issue. I’d like to get a bunch of data on Utah climate and see if Utah winters have warmed or if snowfall has been less than in the past.

Blackfoot Daisy is mentioned on the GardenWeb thread linked in the article below. It’s got small white flowers and blooms spring to fall. I might need to try this out! It is drought tolerant with a deep taproot.

Another post on that thread at GardenWeb said Salvia greggi ‘Cherry Queen’ bloomed from mid April to October in her zone 6 garden in Missouri. That’s the same zone as us, although it’s much more humid and wet there. She also had a great web reference: The Missouri Botanical Gardens has a site that shows bloom times for every plant in their gardens. Very nice. See it at: http://www.mobot.org/gardeninghelp/plantfinder/bloom.asp?

I found a nice thread at GardenWeb on long-blooming perennials. I definitely need to look at some of the plants mentioned. Here are some mentioned repeatedly:

• Savlia ‘May Night’. They say it goes for something like 18 weeks of bloom! Wow.
• ‘Walker’s Low’ Nepeta is also mentioned quite a bit.
• Geranium ‘Rozanne’ (a perennial, spreading, true geranium).
• Veronica ‘Icicle’ - also called Speedwell, it’s a vertical spiky flower.
• Kalimeris pinnatifida - a mum-like white daisy that flowers all summer.