If you don't like the weather, wait five minutes

     I awoke today to sunny skies and warm temperatures in the 60's in the middle of May. This is a treat at 9,200 feet. I could hardly wait to get outside. First thing on the list was to check on the progress of the plants pushing their way up through the soil and to check for any signs that the moles were back. Whew, no mole tunnels (yet). More on moles another day.
     First stop...check out the garden. Several inches of growth on the Hops vines, Lovage, Jacob's Ladder, Rhubarb and signs of tulips pushing through the earth. Still no shoots on the Aspen or Crab Apple tree, but there are leaves on the Red Bud! Patience has never been a virtue, so waiting for spring growth is torture for me. Just Friday I saw the yards of folks who live in the foothills and envied their Iris in bloom, grass that needed mowing, trees in full bud and tulips already spent!
     Next stop...get pots and yard furniture out of the shed! I lined the pots up on the walk to make some decisions about where to place them and to create a shopping list. Still too early here to purchase plants. I was so tempted on the way home to purchase a few pots that the local store had hung near the door to tempt fools like me. Every year I get too eager and the weather kills them off.
     When I was a little girl my mother always use to rearrange the living room furniture. It was always like having a brand new room. Now, I have that same kind of fun come spring arranging my pots and deciding where to put them and imagining what I might put inside them for a whole new 'look'. Every year I change it up.
     The front porch pots can't have anything the deer will treat like candy. The deck pots have to be hardy enough to be tossed out of the pots several times by the squirrels, and hardy enough to sustain some hail damage. I like to buy perennials for my pots so that I can pop them into the ground at the end of the season. I have one exception: lavender. I'm a fool for the fragrance and look of lavender. Lavender won't survive our winters (I've tried...twice!) but I have to have it in pots during the summer. 
     I bought some Elephant Ear bulbs through a catalog and am wondering what to do with them. Put them in a pot? Will they grow here? In the ground? I know they aren't a zone 3 or 4 plant but I bought them to treat as an annual. I'll let you know if it works!
      Gardening is the extreme science...everything is an experiment. I bought some bare root plants from a catalog in the fall and some this spring. I can't even remember what I got or where they are in the garden. I do remember planting some bare root Oriental Poppies, but see absolutely no evidence of them. I have some poppies coming up that I planted two years ago that my mother gave me and they've even spread a little (that's a first for me!)  The catalogs all say that poppies are deer resistant...ha! I'm wondering if it takes a couple of years for bare root plants to establish themselves before they grow? Anyone had any luck with this?
     Just as I was in the swing of things, and contemplating a change of clothes into shorts and a tank top, the temperature started to drop. Looking up I saw the skies were changing all around me. In just a short time, it started to snow and continued for the rest of the day.
     As they say in Colorado, "if you don't like the weather, wait five minutes." And so ended my day of puttering in my garden. On the plus side...moisture!