Pat on my back!

It's a good time in the garden!  Things are sprouting up (except the lettuce, blah.  Planted that out too late I think)  but the true successes are those that I weren't sure if they would make an appearance!

Every year I typically take cuttings of the mother plant for the winter and then cover mama plant with about 5-8 inches of pine needle mulching and pray that mama will come back.

The stevia got covered too late last year and didn't return despite having survived 2 years my garden when super-mulched (granted it was a dang, cold winter).

My lemongrass was unintentionally left all winter in a pot in the unheated and barely lit sunroom, but after taking pieces out of the pot there was still green and healthy white roots, so though I'm waiting for some real growth still now that they're back in the ground I can still cheer on for once the hardiness of grasses! Woohoo!

The real big news is that the lemon verbena which I took cuttings of that never ended up rooting up, survived under my mulch method and is looking lovely and pushing out leaf buds.  I'll work on taking cutting earlier on this time because I don't like gambling like I did last year.

One of the sunchokes that I bought from a grocery store, kept in the refrigerator for months and then buried in a small bed looks like it's coming up.  Unless there's some other strange fuzzy-leafed inhabitant in my garden bed that I should be aware of... I can't wait to anticipate potentially 10 ft tall chocolate scented flowers and root veggies!  *dances*

FINALLY, my big thrill is the my Haight Ashbury may have survived the winter too (YES!).  I was digging around the area I originally had planted it and pruned inch thick trunks when I noticed some growth of a purplish nature that I can only believe to be the hibiscus.  The hole I dug had roots that were white and healthy looking too, and though the old plant parts that I had pruned were dead and dry looking, I've know from past experience that hibiscus are just like that until they get going and send new branches/shoots from the ground.  More news on that another time in case I'm jumping the gun, but it's great to see things, especially uncertain things, making their appearance again.

Some days I with I was as tough as my plants are!