Snow, Glorious Snow!

The very best winter protection for our roses is a foot of snow and that's exactly what we got today, Sunday, December 9th.  Not only does it provide better insulation than you can get from any other kind of winter protection, but it also gives you lovely, trickling moisture in the spring, when it melts.  One of our Twin Cities Rose Club members, Tim Schmaltz, once said, jokingly, that the TCRC ought to invest in a snow-making machine, to be hauled around to members' gardens, in winters when we don't get enough snow before our coldest weather in January.  More truth than joking in that idea!  One of the things I do to supplement the snow cover on my beds is to run my snow blower along the edges and throw snow up on the beds from the lawn.  This works particularly well in years when we don't get much snow, like last winter.

So, to paraphrase Dickens' "Oliver Twist":  "Snow, Glorious Snow"!

Here are a few pictures of my rose beds taken early this afternoon.  Note that my leaf cylinders and bags are thoroughly supplemented with a beautiful white layer of insulation.

Here is my Buck Earth Song bed, with my koi pond and Morden Centennial bed in the background.  I have posted this same view in the summer-time several times.

Below are two tiered beds with a variety of Buck roses and Hardy Canadiens, such as Winnipeg Parks (left) and Morden Blush (right)

Below is the Earth Song bed looking in the other direction, i.e. up toward the deck where the first picture was taken.

A little broader panorama of the tiered beds and the back of our house in the snow.



Below: The Buck "Carefree Beauty" and "Earth Song" bed in front of our house.  The pretty tree is a "Thornless Hawthorn".  The fence is there to keep our cat away from any dead voles that have taken the Zinc Phosphide poison positioned around the bed in tin-cans and large black plastic rodent traps.  Now that the snow is on the beds, I won't worry about him getting at the poison itself.  (Note how the camera flash caught the big snow flakes falling).

Below are four Buck "Earth Songs" in a little bed at the edge of our garage.  Again, the fence is for the cat.