Get outside! Warm and cozy but ready to be in the yard again? Then make yourself do it. There’s work to be done and beauty to be taken in. You just need the right clothes and you’ll be as energized as I’ve been this month! Especially if you utilize heat sinks.

Find a Heat Sink for Perennials

You can keep some perennials going by placing them near a heat sink. See the picture above where a Crinum erubescens near a concrete ledge is completely green, but in the foreground, 6 inches away, other shoots of the same plant are dormant already cut back to nubs.

Heat sinks are things that absorb solar energy in the day and radiate it at night: sidewalks, rocks, buckets of water, ponds, metal sculpture, brick walls.

In the garden this week, we are still planting bulbs! Byzantine glad, Oxalis, Narcissus jonquilla Hawera, Zephyranthes candida (planted 20,000). We’re also then planting tree saplings. Remember, trees can grow really close together and then be used as hedges and security barriers this way. We plant Bald Cypress Trees 12 inches a part.

We’re also keeping close watch on the rabbit food: Young pyracantha, Aster leaves, larkspur seedlings.

Plants that Look Great Now

Chrysanthemum Christmas Burgundy was in full flower on Christmas Day. Luneria annua is making sweet 6 tall green mounds, getting ready to give up purple May flowers.

Adlumia fungosa a freaky, long time favorite. A climbing biennial, winter growing delicate, ferny leaves. Seed now available from Chiltern Seeds.

Oenothera fruiticosa, Ethan Kauffman says, Resembling aboriginal art, most of the rosettes look as they’ve been misted with an ochre colored dye.

And all of those stunning, ice covered, frost dusted, dead things that are not in warm micro habitats!