jennifersmith236: Winter returns to Colorado, but some garden plants remain undaunted

A small and spidery daffodil, variety unknown, dips two blooms over Tuesday?s snowfall. (Susan Clotfelter, The Denver Post)

A garden is never as quiet as when winter returns to give us a stern backward glance.

As of Tuesday evening, I?m not ready to call this storm a total fizzle, though as I write this, Loveland has a paltry few inches compared to reports of nine in Boulder. I definitely wanted a big, sloppy, wet, tree-feeding, bulb-perking, bird-wallow-inducing upslop. I was ready.

Clear plastic tubs keep some moisture and warmth in for a patch of tulips. (Susan Clotfelter, The Denver Post)

I covered up some of my tulips the night before the storm with random plastic tubs pulled from the garage (during a cold snap, it pays to be a pack rat). Last year the tulip display was pretty pathetic, so I?m really hoping to see some of them ? a mix of orange and blackish purple varieties ? bloom this year, even if the basket-of-gold that usually sets them off with a haze of brilliant yellow has died of old age. I?ve even got a ?control group? of uncovered tulips so that I can compare the results The daffodils and camassia and two types of wildflower tulips, aka species tulips, are on their own in the weather. You can only keep so many unused plastic tubs in your garage before you start to fear someone?s going to put you on an episode of ?Hoarders.?

You can see the moisture vapor condensing on the tub?s inner walls. Hopefully, that means it?s warmer inside. (Susan Clotfelter, The Denver Post)

Note that the tubs are weighted against the forecast winds with big ol? rocks. And that, amazingly, there?s a good bit of condensation inside the clear tubs. I hope that means it?s warmer in there. I hope that means it?ll stay warmer through the night, even if that condensation freezes.

Over on the east side of the house, where a couple of weekends ago I planted purple snap peas and radishes and broccoli raab in a raised bed, I covered up that part of the seedbed with a bunch of flattened cardboard boxes, weighted with an old trellis (see above, ?pack rat.?)

The east-side raised bed got covered with flattened cardboard boxes and a trellis, all weighted with a rock. (Susan Clotfelter, The Denver Post)

As I drove home Monday night in the wind, I had visions of those boxes sailing to Greeley. But no: On that protected east side, the wind couldn?t reach them. So just for good measure, I plopped another box on and weighted the whole thing with another big ol? rock.

This morning, though, as the snow began to pile up, what did I spy, half buried in the snow of that raised bed?

But what?s that, peeking out of the snow? My soil knife. Heckuva way to treat a tool.

My beloved clay-conquering A.M. Leonard soil knife. For shame. I?d planted one more row of peas Monday morning that I?d gotten soaked overnight, and I left my most versatile, fierce-and-vicious garden tool out in the wet and the cold. Bad, bad gardener.

But the thrill of gardening is, you can still do something wrong, and get the benefit of what plants do right. One of those things is my new baby lilac, pictured below. It was a gift from friends last fall. I have one lilac already, an old-fashioned double, and ? I?m a sucker for them. I didn?t know what kind this one was, but I was surely a-keeping it. It came to me potted up in native Colorado clay, and there it stayed all winter. I threw some water on it when I thought of it. When the recent warm spell hit, I watered and mulched it. I wasn?t sure whether it would make it, but hey, a gift is a gift.

And just look below: Buds. Irrepressible, invincible buds, showing up proud on a tree whose above-ground height isn?t even 12 inches yet. Take that, winter. You may be huge. You may be swirling across half a continent, wreaking havoc on human endeavors, delivering or withholding the moisture we?ve yearned for. But your days are numbered, and in the beginnings of the smallest leaf, the most fragile flower, is your ending. For now, at least.