GET GROWING!
SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION
“I have to wait for a few weeks for my spring bulbs to put up a show and at least until early June for the iris to come into its own.”
By LADYBUG
Most people understand the expression six degrees of separation to mean that we are all connected in more ways than we realize.
Wikipedia describes it as the idea that all people, on average, are six or fewer social connections away from each other.
However, for gardeners, six degrees of separation is a measure of the vast differences in the gardens of those who are just a few degrees away from each other – in terms of temperature, that is. A mere six degrees or even less can mean a longer or shorter gardening season.
My friend Jyothi’s garden in New Jersey in late April-early May may as well be on another planet: “Our garden is beautiful this time of year,” she shared in an e-mail last year. “We’ve had several trees and bushes that have bloomed since early spring including tulips, cherry trees, lilacs, a dogwood tree, magnolias, rhododendrons and a flowering pear. Several peony bushes are on the verge of blooming. There is still the flowers of hibiscus, azaleas, day lilies, Japanese lilacs, crape myrtle and the chaste tree to look forward to. I’m sitting on our deck and soaking in the scents and sounds of this golden day. It’s 70 degrees with a light breeze and the birds are chirping cheerfully. All’s right with my world at this moment!”
While I loved her description of her garden, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for myself as I looked out – it was snowing!
It was the same story with Linda, another gardening pal closer home. In an email sent on April 14, she said her garden in Etobicoke was “...getting more colourful. The lungwort, scilla, crocus are just finished, hyacinths and daffodils are now blooming. We got most of the raking done and my beds cleaned up.”
This, when all I could report were cold and windy days in which my lungworts, crocus and scilla were just beginning to make their appearance felt, little nubs of green peeking tentatively out of the ground. .
For gardeners, six degrees of separation is a measure of the vast differences in the gardens of those who are just a few degrees away from each other – in terms of temperature, that is. A mere six degrees or even less can mean a longer or shorter gardening season.
In the very beginning of June, Linda was sending me pictures of lupins in full bloom. Mine, I had to hunt for. Had they made it through winter?
And this, when not so long ago we were neighbours and exchanged (still do!) plants.
Thus many of our plants are babies of or parts of plants from each other’s gardens and I see no reason why mine should be several weeks behind hers except that we “moved north” a few years ago.
A mere 40-minute drive away, but that places us in different gardening zones for plant hardiness.
We are always, but always, a few degrees lower. Doesn’t seem like such a big deal, until I spot lilacs in full, glorious bloom in Toronto while the ones in my garden are just breaking dormancy. My peonies and iris used to treat me to a spectacular show in early May. Now I have to wait until June. It would be bearable if the seasons was just pushed – the show started late, but continued later, too. But of course, it doesn’t work like that. While my friends are still celebrating ripening tomatoes, mine have been hit by a hard frost.
Last year, we had a spell of cold days with lows of 1 and 2. In September. When it was still officially summer. Every time my phone showed a low that hovered just barely above the freezing mark, the first thing I’d do was check what it was for gardening pals in Toronto and Mississauga – misery loves company! But they were always several degrees higher. Let me share the temperatures on September 19, for illustration. While we were at 12 and 1, in Mississauga, they were at 13 and 5 and in Toronto, a positively balmy 13 and 7.
Which was bad enough, until our low of 1 was changed to zero with a frost advisory.
I give in to a bad case of envy periodically, and then in an attempt to shake myself out of it, remind myself that I can enjoy the gardens of friends vicariously. But for my friend Saleem who writes of picking fresh lettuce for his sandwich while we are knee-deep in snow, I have a different response: “Oh, stop showing off!”
But then, he was in sunny Florida. So I guess I should learn to deal with that. And with his jasmine hedge, when all I can lay claim to is a potted jasmine plant.
It does put up a brave show though it spends more than half the year indoors and I am grateful.
But, I mutter in spite of myself, a whole jasmine hedge.
Saleem and Jyothi have both since moved to new homes. Any day now the emails will start showing in my inbox with descriptions of what’s blooming in their new yards.