Early blooming

MG blog

I do a good chunk of my gardening in my bathrobe. I go out first thing with the dogs, and while they inspect the yard, I always get sucked into SOMETHING garden-related. Even in winter, if it’s not blowing and minus two I got out with gloves and nippers. Which is how I ended up with black raspberry sprigs in my bathrobe pocket the other day. I’d put the nippers in my robe, boots on my feet (no socks, like a dope) and clumped out to the wild and whippy raspberry (Rubus) patch. Black raspberry canes are like an alien species determined to take over the world. They send out great arching stems that reach down for soil and root from the tip. They always reach outside their bounds, and into the reds’ territory to claim a stake. I had pruned and yanked last fall in late November, but here I was again only eight weeks later doing the same thing in what felt like the dead of winter. You have to admire their determination.

The thing that startled me though, was the fact that a lot of the red raspberry canes’ buds are already starting to swell. It’s too early. Having grown red raspberries, both summer (floricane) i.e. once-beaaring, and fall (primocanes) i.e. twice-bearing if you let them – for 30 years, I look for them to start swelling at the end of February, maybe beginning of March depending on the cold and light. Mid-January is too weird.

Likewise, the tulip magnolia (Magnolia x soulangiana), with a gorgeous buttery bloom, is swelling way early. It’s planted in a fairly protected spot, which last year prompted it to bloom early and then get smashed by heavy frost, but still… For thirty-plus years, the Smithsonian has been doing bloom time studies, which show that plants in the mid-Atlantic region have increased their bloom times anywhere from 2 days to 48 days. Their assumption is that it’s a result of climate change. Still. Even though I get a little stir-crazy and go out with the secateurs in my bathrobe pocket on still winter mornings to prune the berry canes, it doesn’t mean I’m looking for a complete shift. If I’d wanted to live in the Carolinas, I’d have moved there.
Rose is finished inspecting the compost heap, and my toes are ready to fall off inside my boots, so I clomp back inside. When I get there, I discover the thorny bit of black raspberry cane.