Snowdrops, like these late January bloomers on Comox, in the depth of winter are lovely, but not reliable predictors of an early spring. March will tell the tale. *(Chris Jennings Photo)*

FEBRUARY - THE ODD MONTH
Patient Lilacs & Frisky Hummingbirds

by Peter W. Gribble

February has similarities with November: warm spring-like days; cold wintery snow bombs; gorgeous sunny days; endless rainy drear.

From a gardening point of view: both months are unreliable. One day we’re counting snowdrops; the next they’re under a foot of snow. Our usual winter lockdown is compounded by our COVID one. Similarities are offset by the dynamic difference behind each. November is the onset of the shutdown, lockdown season. February’s winter shackles and those of COVID are loosening.

Reassuring signs of our slow spring emerge. Snowdrop numbers increase: the green shoots of bluebells and daffodils are lengthening – early daffodil varieties might bloom before the end of the month; Himalayan sweet box scents the air; hellebore flowers last for months; birdsong develops complexities; people seem less bundled up than a month ago. Puffy jacket sightings are falling off.

Gaps in my spring-sign-counting inventory are reminders that every year is different. Absent from the list is the sighting of my first blooming dandelion – shyly popping up in the driveway usually sometime in January. No woolly bear caterpillars to check on either. Next door, the two huge 100-year-old hazelnut trees have finally died from the filbert blight – no grand festoons of catkins exhaling pale yellow clouds of pollen this year. What pollen-eating insects and birds will go hungry without their first substantial meal of the year? Blue jays and squirrels will miss their late summer nut harvests.

This spotty evidence is enough to call up the annual February question: Is winter over?

As my Februaries pile up over the years, experience trumps hope: I would say no, winter is not over. More often than not, March is readying a nasty surprise – the final snowfall, the last hard frost, the big blow slamming in from the Pacific. Exceptional years like 2016 – winter was done by the end of the Christmas season – and a daily close look at the long-range weather forecast lures hope and me into the garden to add any substantiating detail to the hypothesis that an early spring has started.

Now is a good time to take a closer look at this year’s *West Coast Seeds* and other gardening catalogues.

Then chill temperatures force me back inside to wrap stiffened fingers around a warm mug of something. I resort to turning pages of gardening books and magazines bright with spring and summer promise. Just as satisfying as a steaming mug is the West Coast Seeds Gardening Guide. I write down a to-buy list even though I have no room left in the garden. Perhaps if some plants haven’t survived the winter, at least I’ll have a selection of possible replacements to choose from.

Fortified once more, I go out again and continue the inventory. I’m tempted to prune several over-large bushes. The Buddleia – tough old thing – I can do now but the Winter Honeysuckle (Lonicera fragrantissima) is enormous and covered with flower buds like never before. I did a light prune in the fall, which seems to stimulate a more exuberant bloom the following late winter. The scent doesn’t travel except on the warmest February days but put your nose to a bloom and you’re transported. Hummingbirds sip enthusiastically from the blossoms as well. Once the bloom is finished, then the heavier prune can happen.

Roses are best left until March as any tender new growth breaking from old stems during a warm February can be damaged in a March blast and set the whole plant back. Pruning in March solves this with a firm cutback to reset the growing agenda. As mentioned in a previous column, I water my roses, starting in March, with warm (not hot) water, which encourages the root system into an accelerated growth phase. Consistent warm water watering will induce roses to bloom three to four weeks before anyone else’s. Ancient Romans, besotted with rose mania, were doing this two thousand years ago.

Some plants looking ravaged and dead are gradually greening up again. I look to the lilacs to size up how their buds are swelling – they won’t bloom until May but their patience bolsters mine.

I don’t start a full-on garden clean up until March – one: to protect the habitats of hibernating beneficial insects and ground-dwelling bees until they’re ready to emerge and, two: pruning plants, including perennials, prematurely can kill them – winter is tough enough to endure but cold weather pruning on top of it? No. Wait until daily highs are reaching ten degrees Celsius.

Then there’s the inner inventory – the signs within of the gradual lift away from the soft, self-comforting, semi-hibernating doze we’ve been in for months. There’s a gradual shift in what we wear, the lighter, more breathable fabrics; having a lighter breakfast instead of the warming brick of porridge; and the desire to nap in the middle of the afternoon leveling off. Even the morning check of the day’s temperatures has undergone a subtle shift. I check the highs first and then the lows, not the other way around as I was doing a month ago.

Some of the house plants seem to know something is up. My cheerful, little Mandarin Orange Spider Plant (Chlorophytum amaniense) has put out two flower stalks.

The days lengthen and brighten. Hummingbirds are exhibiting frisky interest in each other as are crows, blue jays, and chickadees. Despite global warming and climatic shift, February may be a little early for the abrupt departure of juncos. A sudden collective decision – and, overnight, they’ve vanished north to their summer breeding grounds. Bird song was changing mid-January – two-note chickadees were heard and song sparrow arias have now developed trills and arpeggios. No sound of robins yet – they’re late this year in my neck of the woods.

Outside again, this time on my hands and knees, the smell of the earth is a heady message, a layered language of scent, a summons to breathe deeply, to sense and share the biotic pulse. The moist soil exhaling the rain and snows of the past months is an invitation to drink the air percolating with spring. The garden is in a low simmer on the backburner called February.

Rhapsody aside, my gardening toolbox chilling on the back porch is calling. I warm up the handle of my weeder, thinking as I do every spring that I should clear out the tools I never use. The good intention dies, of course, with every February’s excuse, “but I might need this at some point,” and the collection holds fast to its impressive clutter.

Come what may, there will always be buttercups.

It may have begun as a weeding maxim: “Why wait for spring? Do it now!” For me it’s one of February’s goads: the resented urge to start the yearly labor once again: weeding the buttercup from beds and lawn. Always green, ever rampant; winter and Februaries have no effect on it. Impervious to seasons and my gardening efforts.

Buttercup never sleeps.