Snow falling on fuchsia, and citrus, and everything
Seattle didn’t have a white Christmas — but almost. Flurries started sometime overnight from December 25th to 26th. I woke some time in the small hours of the morning and knew it was snowing by the amount of light i could see reflecting outside, even beyond our dark bedroom draperies.
So i guess we got a white Boxing Day. All told, by the time it stopped in the evening i measured 6″ of accumulation in our back yard.
It’s also unseasonably cold this week. And i don’t mean it’s a bit chilly — i mean when i woke up yesterday, our weather station had recorded an overnight low of just 14.7°F. Yesterday’s high was a whopping 24 °F. Yikes. I have brought the household up to speed on protocol for preventing the pipes from freezing.
garden notes
Every autumn, i bring a few of the most delicate plants inside for the season and put them under full-spectrum lights, so the cinnamon, the avocado, and the curry plant are safe. I try to bring them in before daytime temperatures are consistently in the 40s.
This year i also brought in the marjoram, because i didn’t realize that, unlike other oregano relatives i’ve grown, it’s more sensitive to cold. No wonder they kept dying! But this one’s under a light in the hallway and seems to be doing just fine. A tiny snail rode along on the marjoram when it came inside, and Andy theorizes that the plant just needed a little supervisor to keep an eye on it.
But anyway. Before the snow and freezing temperatures started, i at least had a plan for bringing in the citrus plants, so on Christmas Eve we moved them to the patio. That meant that at least they didn’t suffer any snow accumulation before we brought them into the kitchen on Christmas Day, but i think it was still too cold for the orange tree, because while the plant itself is fine all the tiny oranges seem to have suffered. The Meyer lemons, however, still look great, as does the tree itself. The key lime and the yuzu trees also seem to have suffered no ill effects from the cold.
I don’t have any room inside for the many fuchsias i grow. I only grow hardy fuchsias, so i’m hopeful that at least the roots and main portion of the plants will survive, but we’ll see who’s still hanging in there come spring.
I’m a little worried about the bay tree and the two olives, but there’s just no more room in this inn. Fingers crossed for spring.