Although I only have one true gardening season under my belt, I'm relatively comfortable calling myself a gardener. Last year, our first full growing season at this house, I experimented with all the methods, practices, varieties – you name it. And this year I feel much more confident heading into spring than I did last year at this time. That’s why I’m so glad to have a few plants that I need to tend to inside until it’s safe to bring them back out into the sun.
I bought a Meyer Lemon tree in mid-June and moved it around the property all summer trying to provide it with as much sun as possible. A couple of months in, I potted it up to about twice the original pot size. It seemed happy – all the leaves were green and the branches were healthy – but there was no obvious growth or budding taking place before winter showed up and it was time to move her inside. My office is heated and gets morning sun so I assumed that was the perfect spot for winterizing Lemony Meyer (her official name). I moved her around to the different window seats a bit until I finally settled on a stool next to my tall grow-light tower. I hadn't planned to use the grow lights until January when seed sowing begins, but I figured why not add a little more light to the short winter days? I could probably use more light myself.
Right around Christmas day I noticed some tiny little buds that looked like they might be flowers growing on the tip of one of her branches. Really? You're going to flower in December? This is awesome! And then on January 1st the fat buds burst open and the petals parted and I had a flowering lemon tree on my hands in the middle of winter. It brings me joy to see this healthy growth in the darkest of winters, but it also makes me more anxious to get growing.
I was also surprised to see that the two tiny nasturtium plants that I kept alive well into fall are also blooming in the dead of winter. They were plopped onto the grow-light tower in October and their leaves cascade over the edge of the shelf. Such pretty flowers. I don't even think I ate any of them last summer, I just grew them for their beauty.
The other way I surround myself with botanicals in winter is with dried flowers. This bunch of dill flowers was dried in September and after a few weeks of hanging upside down in the potting shed, I arranged them in a vase. The best thing about dried dill is that the scent sticks around for a long time after it's picked. Even into November I would walk by the vase and get a hefty whiff of the herb, which I love. But even after it loses its scent, you can still admire the beautiful flowers.
Strawflowers are another of my favorites for cut flowers as well as dried. The tricky thing is I prefer to cut and dry them before the blooms get too large (like the ones in the image below), so timing is everything. I collected a ton of seed last fall so I'm hoping to be overgrown with strawflowers this summer.
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