Are We Really Frost-Free?
April 21 - April 27, 2025
Weekly journal of a Midwest gardener… A week of wondering about the weather.
Monday, April 21, 2025
I spent the morning shopping at the local greenhouse with my sister, helping her buy her annuals. Yes, the frost-tender ones! I knew she’d be texting and asking me to meet her there as soon as I saw that lovely extended forecast with no hint of frost for the next ten days or longer. She bought a wagonful of plants and then some. On the other hand, I, a model of restraint, a paragon of virtue, and a positive example to all, only bought one ostrich fern and four geraniums.1 Yes, I finally feel like I’m old enough to enter my geranium phase of gardening!2
Tuesday, April 22, 2025
Once again, I found myself changing my outfit several times during the day, like a wealthy Edwardian lady.3 I dressed initially to go get my hair cut, then I changed to another shirt to speak online about Lost Ladies of Herbal and Garden Writing for the Herb Society.4 After that, I changed again to mow the lawn and then had one last change of clothes before dinner. Four changes. If you count changing into pajamas later, I changed clothes five times in one day. So Edwardian!
Wednesday, April 23, 2025
I remembered, finally, to pot up the caladiums, elephant ears, and cannas that I bought at Costco a few weeks ago.5 We’ll see how many grow, though I’m sure one of the cannas is going to grow just fine, as it managed to grow a new leaf, breaking through the plastic bag it was in and finding a hole on the side of the box to grow out of. What a champ!
Thursday, April 24, 2025
It feels a bit like the first day of summer.6 I’ve even switched from jeans to shorts. Early in the morning, I did some light weeding—must not let neighbors see dandelions in front!—and put the onion seedlings outside to start hardening them off. Later in the day, UPS brought me my order of geraniums from Select Seeds. I had just enough time to unbox them and give them a good soak. In the middle of the afternoon, we also had a rain shower that dropped almost one-tenth of an inch of rain.
Friday, April 25, 2025
Rainy. Dee and I recorded a podcast episode, and then after lunch, I did what one should do on a rainy day. No, not clean the house or do laundry or sort through stuff or pay bills or water houseplants, or any such thing. I went to the used bookstore! There I found a good used copy of Wildflowers of Indiana by Fred Wampler, illustrated by his wife, Maryrose Wampler, published in 1988. It’s a lovely coffee-table book, and I’m surprised I didn’t already own it. The price tag showed that they put it on the shelf earlier in the week.7
Saturday, April 26, 2025
Brrrr… it was chilly in the morning when I met my youngest sister at the local greenhouse for her second round of plant shopping. She bought more frost-tender annuals, and I bought some clay pots for my new geraniums, plus some celery plants. As we were leaving, she looked at her weather app and gulped at the forecast, which seemed to be trending in the wrong direction!8 I looked at the forecast for the rest of the day and decided to mow and trim the lawn.9
Sunday, April 27, 2025
A sunny day. I tended to all the houseplants, including one that had grown too much in one direction and thus flung itself onto the floor. Fortunately, the fall didn’t break its pot, so I righted it up, added some more potting soil, and most importantly, tied it to a support so it isn’t so one-sided. Then I put it on the floor in another spot to recover. I also checked on the tomato and pepper seedlings. They are growing wonderfully and will soon be ready to spend some of the day outdoors as I harden them off.
That’s a Week!
And another week has flown by. On Friday, I met briefly with Annie Guilfoyle, a landscaper in the UK, via Zoom to prepare for my “Thursday Garden Chat” with Noel Kingsbury for their podcast/YouTube channel, Garden Masterclass. Go to their events page to see how to join in live on Thursday, May 1, 2025 at 1:00 pm Eastern Time. Our topic is the Lost Ladies of Garden Writing, or as I now think of it, “Gardening with the Lost Ladies of Garden Writing.” Their stories are fascinating, but what’s the point of finding out about them if you don’t invite them into your own garden and let them influence you a bit?
Do you read my stories of these garden writers? If so, do you have a favorite one you think I should definitely mention?
Quotable
“Ideas are always disturbing, especially new ideas. Most normal, charming, intelligent adults have learned to leave their minds alone and so are immune to new ideas. But not gardeners. These unfortunates are susceptible to every new idea carried by the wings of chance.” - Josephine Nuese
Have a great gardening week!
Where Else to Find Me and How to Support Me
🌐 My online home is my website. where my main blog still lives happily as May Dreams Gardens. Come visit anytime!
🎙️ Tune in every Wednesday to The Gardenangelists, my weekly podcast where Dee Nash and I dig into all things gardening—flowers, veggies, and all the best dirt, plus gardening books. We’re on YouTube, too, so you can listen and watch!
🌸 Curious about the women who shaped garden writing? Check out Lost Ladies of Garden Writing—a passion project of mine with new posts every other Wednesday.
📸 Follow me on Instagram for letters to my garden, pictures of my flowers and garden, and the occasional reel that might make you smile (or nod in solidarity).
📚 Add a little garden joy to your bookshelf with one (or all!) of my five humorous yet helpful gardening books—or pick up one of my two children’s books for the young garden-lovers in your life.
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🌿 And the biggest help of all? Share this newsletter with fellow gardeners who might enjoy it. Word of mouth is the best kind of fertilizer to help a newsletter grow.
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As The Carpenters used to sing, “We’ve only just begun…” when it comes to buying plants this spring. My youngest sister will buy more, and I’ll buy a lot more. (Sorry-not-sorry for the ear worm!)
When I write “geranium,” of course, I mean pelargonium. Many people think of these as old-fashioned flowers, me included, but they are also fun and easy to grow. I’m going to have a theater of them on my back patio, all different kinds, mostly chosen for their leaf colors. I even bought some metal shelves at Aldi—from the Finds aisle—to stage them.
While touring the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC, in the days when you rented a headset and audio tape player to listen to a guide talk as you walked through, the guide said that the women often changed their clothes several times a day, depending on their activities. That was during the Edwardian era in England, approximately 1901 - 1914.
I also joined the Herb Society of America. For a modest amount—about what some writers charge for their special Substack content—I’ll have access to all kinds of educational materials and webinars. Yes, I’m entering my herbal era, along with my geranium era. I am still in my viola era and my vegetable garden era… Yes, I think there is room for all these eras in my garden!
Also on Wednesday, the manager at the restaurant where I ate lunch with a friend showed me pictures of the packages of what he planted in his yard over the past few days, including a bag of caladiums he bought at Costco. He thought they’d be a perennial, and I explained they are tropical plants and might not even grow since he planted them directly in the soil, which is still kind of chilly. They don’t like that!
Are we truly frost-free now until fall? It seems like it but sometimes that “old-timer” in me shows up and whispers, “What about dogwood winter?” That’s what they used to call a cold snap that happened when the dogwoods were blooming. And the dogwoods ARE blooming now.
I added a few other books to my library this week; I'll discuss them in another newsletter or as I read them.
One weather app showed a low temperature on Sunday, May 4th of 33F. Another app showed a low temp on May 4th of 50F. Which one to believe?
Saturday was the first time I mowed in the back and the fourth time I mowed in the front. Why wait on the back? To give the crocus foliage time to grow so those corms can fatten up and multiply for next year.
What a huge gift your weekly recounting of your gardening days are.🙏🏼 They remind me just the teenst of green-covered books with lined paper that my grandmother wrote in daily in her later, rocking chair mostly years. 'Picked peas."
"Planted potatoes." "Papa took green beans to market to sell." "Shelled peas with Salome."