Mail Order Plants

Weather: Some rain Tuesday, almost a month after the last snow. Winds nearly every day, though only high a few times.

The moisture we got this winter apparently was diverted from the west coast of México. Now, grass and brush fires are raging in places there. So far the smoke has gone into south Texas, but I suspect some pollutants are reaching us.

Last rain: 5/11. Week’s low: 36 degrees F. Week’s high: 83 degrees F in the shade.

What’s blooming in the area: Austrian copper, Persian yellow, Doctor Huey, and wild pink roses, yellow-flowered potentilla, spirea, pyracantha, beauty bush, snowball, bearded iris, red hot poker, oriental poppy, blue flax, snow-in-summer, Jupiter’s beard, golden spur columbine

What’s blooming beyond the walls and fences: Tamarix, alfilerillo, tumble mustard, fern leaf globe mallow, green leaf five-eyes, alfalfa, flea bane, goat’s beard, common and native dandelions, June, needle, rice, cheat, brome, and three-awn grasses

What’s blooming in my yard: Apache plume, cliff rose, chives, vinca, coral bells, Bath pinks, winecup mallow, pink evening primrose, Dutch clover, catmint, baptisia, wintered-over pansy and snapdragon, Shasta daisy

What’s emerging: corn in a market garden, tomatillos, a few morning glory and annual four o’clock seeds

Bedding and house plants: Snapdragons, zonal geraniums, pansies

Tasks: I’ve been planting seeds, although few have come up. I suspect that while the soil is warm enough to handle, it’s not warm enough to nurture seeds. The hours of cool, including the nights, are longer than the hours of warmth.

Animal sightings: Chickadees, house wrens, quail, gecko, cabbage and small orange butterflies, bumble and bees, hornets, heard crickets, sidewalk ants

Weekly update: Buying plants from a mail-order nursery is always a crap shoot. You never know when they’re going to arrive.

All too often, companies have some map that places us in the same area as Albuquerque. I get things when the ground is too cold to work, and have to hold them on the back porch. Sometimes that’s weeks, by which time the plants have deteriorated and no longer are worth planting.

This year, I tried specifying May 4 as a preferred ship day. My reasoning was our last frost day used to be May 1. Since the 4th was a Monday, that would mean I would get the plants by Friday, and they wouldn’t spend a weekend in uncontrolled storage.

One nursery called and said I was in zone 5, and they normally begin shipping to that zone the first of March.

Exactly my problem. It was 22 degrees on my porch on March 1. The afternoon high of 63 was irrelevant.

After some discussion, I mentioned our last frost date. That was something the other person understood, and said she would talk to her supervisor.

The plants arrived May 13. They probably were shipped May 4, but the company used the UPS post office option. I’ve learned that is absolutely the slowest way to ship. Things arrive on the last promised date. It does not take 9 days for anything to travel from one part of this country to another, not even from Hawaii to Bangor, Maine.

Who knew in late January, this year would simply elide a month. We had snow on April 13, and morning temperatures down to 15 on April 15. Then, afternoons returned to the 70s.

I’m getting the plants when I asked for them, but this year it’s way too late. We still have morning temperatures in the high 30s, but the afternoons resemble mid-summer. Plants simply can’t adapt in those conditions.

It wouldn’t have made any difference if I had waited to buy things in a local nursery. Normally, they don’t get their stock until late April. The period from May 1 to Mother’s Day is their busiest time.

That’s when I usually can find snapdragons and pansies. They’re cold weather annuals, and early May is the end of their spring bloom period. They rarely survive into fall.

Who knew in January all the nurseries would be closed in April by a virus. On May 1, one could place a phone order and pick it up at the curb.

The exception was hardware stores and big boxes. They were deemed essential businesses, and never closed. One could use them, if one was brave enough. I went to the local big box on Good Friday, and never returned. Even if I though it had something I wanted, it wasn’t worth dying for.

Everything I bought this year was from one of my two local hardware stores. I couldn’t get an insecticide that specified it treated aphids, and I ran out of fertilizer. Nothing critical. Things have survived every kind of neglect, except drought.

Now, I worry the local nurseries may not survive as long as my pansies.

Notes on photographs: All taken 16 May 2020.
1. Spring Matrix Sangria pansy (Viola wittrockiana) under the peach tree.

2. White Rocket snapdragon (Antirrhinum majus) with Queen Anne’s lace (Daucus carpta) in back.

3. Easter Bonnet sweet alyssum (Lobularia maritima) going out of bloom while it’s hardening and waiting for the last shipment from someone using UPS. The breeder dropped the pretense it’s fragrant, and simply call it alyssum.