the wages of a mild winter?

"March," they say, "comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb." Except when it doesn't.

And this year it didn't. Or, at least February wasn't all that lionesque. Or something. I'm not sure where I'm going with this metaphor, but bear with me.

Seriously, though, normally on March 1 I'd be looking for the weather to be getting better as spring approaches. And hoping that, as the snow cover melts and the weather tames up, my flowers come up too. But this has been such an odd winter that I'm worried about how the flowers will do.

One of the things I've learned in my time with LIDS is that perennials (or at least the perennials that bloom up around here) need a period of extreme cold in order to prepare themselves for the spring. And a good stretch of snow cover helps as well (I assume the water that results from the melt is an important element. But we've had a moderate winter with relatively little frigid weather and almost no snow.

Who knows -- it's only March 1, so we may get that late cold snap. But in the meantime, we have lots of flowers -- crocuses, daylilies, daffodils and others coming up. And I fear that this year we'll have a crappy garden.

But at least we have hellibores...