Gardening in Winter

I’ve optimistically titled this “Gardening in Winter” because—occasionally—I write about gardening. And it’s winter---some days more than others.

Saturday was one of those “warm” winter days. And by warm, I mean mild. Mild enough that when I took a break from my indoors chores to go for a walk with my neighbor, I hated to go back inside and return to my project. So, I took a walk around my yard to check on the flora and fauna. Sadly, the fauna had been chewing on the flora.

Stupid elk had yanked up my primroses, eaten some of my snowdrops and spread “fertilizer” across my lawn. “What!?” I hear you asking, “How on earth did the ‘stupid elk’ breech your loaner fence? Did the power go out? Did you forget to plug it in again? Have elk developed thumbs and/or been attending night school classes to get their GED’s, and have shorted out your fence with their newly acquired digits/skills?

”

The answers are (in reverse order) 1: Not yet. 2: No—stop blaming the victim. I only did that once. Ok twice. 3: No power outages, thank goodness. 4: There was no fence to breech. The fence was a “loaner,” and apparently some rancher on the east side needed MY FENCE to protect his cattle from wolves. I know, right? Like beef is more important than primroses!

So last Saturday I did a little gardening. I replanted what remained of my primroses, sprinkled dirt back over my snow drops, and started obsessing over a fence again.

Turns out that winter gardening has a lot more in common with warm weather gardening than I’d like.