This evening was the Annual Laying of the Straw. That's the day when we look at the weather forecast, go "oh fuck! we're having a hard freeze tonight!" buy a bale of straw on the way home from work, and run around in the evening dusk laying straw over all the tender perennials, trying to finish before it gets too dark to see the plants.
We covered the fig, the gerber daisies, the snapdragons, the gardenia, the bay leaf, the dahlia, the artichokes, the amaryllis and the crinum lilies. I don't think the snapdragons, the bay or the crinum lilies really need it, but we had the straw and it won't hurt them. I'm not optimistic about the artichokes. Georg suggested that if they die, next year we try again and build them a cold frame. I saw on a TV show how to make one out of PVC pipe, clear plastic and zip ties. I wonder if it's really as easy as it looked on the show. I guess the hard part would be remembering to remove the frame during the day, so the plants don't cook in the sun.
I kept feeling like we were missing something. I must have been thinking of the Easter freeze two years ago, when we covered the blueberries and the hydrangeas in a (failed, as it turned out) attempt to protect the spring buds.
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