First Frost

 

We hit 31 a week or so ago, but nothing but the sweet basil was bothered. However, last night it got down to 30 degrees. Brrr....the car is covered with ice.

Impending cold weather sends me into a dither every fall. Which plants should come inside? Which don't winter well and should be sacrificed to the ice?

The decisions are always gradual. Heritage plants first. The Ida Hollenbeck Memorial spider plants and anything that belonged to my mom or Ralph's mama come in first. They have their traditional hibernacula and are well situated long before frost.

Then come the regular geraniums. This year I cut them back with a vengeance, well before frost, and they look the better for it. Many of them I started from purchased seeds several years ago and are colors that would be hard to purchase locally. They go upstairs on an old radio/phonograph thing where they sit in big east windows.

Then come the ones that give me pause. I have successfully wintered things that shouldn't survive indoor life. One pretty bronze petunia made the winter of 24 and was spectacular the following summer. It croaked as soon as I brought it in last year though.

 In 25 I bought a pretty hanging basket from an Amish lady up on Logtown Road. It had pale purple lobelia, dark pansies and babies breath in it. It was so nice that I chopped it back and brought in last winter. The babies breath and pansies vanished but the verbena struggled through. Last spring I trimmed it up and put it on the sitting porch. The verbena flourished and the babies breath came up from seed. I stuck a couple of pansy plants in and it was...

Very nice.

However this fall it was pretty bedraggled and I debated....

Same with several others. It simply kills me to let anything freeze. I stuffed all the petunias into the little portable green house on the porch and zipped it shut. I dragged a gigantic elephant ear that I had decided to let go into the kitchen well after dark last night. The deciding factor was the thick white roots I discovered when I tried to pull it up and a teeny tiny foxtail fern seedling in the same pot. I vaguely remember picking a red berry off Peg's old plant last spring and looking for some place to tuck it in. Guess it decided to grow. 

And then I was out with my headlamp picking the last tomatoes before bed last night as well. You would almost think I hadn't been processing tomato sauce and foisting tomatoes on friends and family for the past couple of months or something.

And, yes, I dragged that tired old verbena upstairs and set it in the east bedroom.

Now I will have to dig the cannas. That is a miserable job, but they are worth the bother in terms of hummingbirds which visit the big red flowers all day long once they bloom.

At least I will have the winter long comfort of lots of greenery from all the plants I have dragged indoors.