Thursday, May 2, 2013

Spring! Spring?

So Minnesota has decided it doesn't remember what season are anymore and, despite the few days of gorgeous, spring-like weather we had last weekend, yesterday brought almost a foot of snow to the southern part of the state. Thankfully, the Twin Cities didn't get any and instead get to enjoy chilly, cold, gray weather. I'm sure all the plants that got excited and sprouted during the warm weather are rather confused by this point. Frankly, I am as well. Last year, we had daffodils by the beginning of April, and this year we're dealing with 30 degree days at the beginning of May. Doesn't really make much sense.
Thankfully the St. Paul campus has some color to offer up in the form of the adorable little scilla flowers that blanket the more wooded areas.


In other news, last week I started my greenhouse job and am having a really good time. Just being able to work in a place filled with plants makes even the more simple tasks enjoyable. We do a lot of rearranging displays, watering and lots and lots of sweeping. My favorite task so far was when we got a new shipment of  moth orchids in and I got to help unpack the boxes, tag them and set them out on display. It was like a mini Christmas, pulling plant after plant out of the boxes, all with amazingly vibrant colors. They were right in mid-bloom and absolutely gorgeous. Some of the larger varieties included some giant, pure white blooms, a white variety with purple spots on the petals and a purple center, one with yellow-green petals and a purple center and rich, dark purple ones as well. There were tiny ones too, some bright pink with yellow edges, purple with darker centers and peach colored ones with gold centers. I've probably ranted enough about orchids now... Anyway, I've found I have to learn things in a really short amount of time, and by no means do I know even close to half yet. But I have another full weekend of work starting tomorrow, so we'll see what that brings.

I'm planning on filling another Grow Write Guild prompt for my next post, but I'll probably be pretty busy until finals week is over. So probably somewhere around the 17th or 18th I'll try to have that up.
In the meantime, I leave you with more scilla carpet pictures. I hope spring is proving to be a lot...springy-er than mine!



2 comments:

  1. When I lived in Calgary we had this problem every year, usually a vicious snow storm at the end of May. Chinook winds were another problem, raising the temperature by 15 even 20 degrees in February. The little troopers in my garden were grape hyacinth, came up and took whatever nature threw at them. Good luck with finals.

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