Winter returns

Was it just last weekend that I was in the yard cutting down my ornamental grasses, complaining about having to wear long pants and sleeves as the temperature was 80ºF/26ºC? It seems like ages ago, as winter has returned to St. Louis. The temperature this morning was 25ºF/-4ºC, which is below normal but isn't unheard of. What is more unusual is the fact that we got about 4" of snow yesterday.

It's probably the most picturesque snowfall of the year, not only for the way that it's combining with the spring flowers and emerging greens, but in that it has stuck to everything. The first sunlight in several days was the final straw -- I had to get outside with the camera.

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Luckily this freeze hit now instead of in a couple more weeks. The later the freeze the more plants suffer. The only thing really awake right now is the dicentra, which looks a little droopy as it starts forming flowers:

This one is under the deck so got just a touch of snow on it.

I don't think there's any permanent damage to the foliage, but I'll know later today when it warms up a bit.

These irises should be fine. I think. I haven't grown them before.

I'm actually hoping the cold injures or kills all of these Silver Maple seeds:

There are thousands of them up there again, ready to twirl themselves down into my planting beds. I'm not a big fan of pulling maple seedlings all year long. I have a feeling they're not affected by the cold though.

The Japanese maples appear to be okay, since they haven't pushed their leaf buds open yet:

In 2007 we had a late freeze after a few weeks of warm temperatures and all of the Japanese maple leaves froze and fell off, forcing the trees to use their secondary buds. Luckily maples have those, but a lot of Japanese maples suffered severe damage that year.

This probably spells the end of the forsythia flowers.

All of the bamboos are flat again, or at least severely bowed, bent under the weight of hundreds or thousands of snow-coated leaves.

There is one bamboo that remains upright though: my newest plant that lost pretty much every leaf this winter. Even so, the few remaining leaves caught their share of the wet, sticky snowfall:

Some of the shrubs that have already started waking up probably don't appreciate these wintry conditions, but they look like they can handle it:

Ninebark

Viburnum sargentii 'Onondaga'

Dappled willow, Salix integra 'Hakuro Nishiki'

My  plum. Will it produce its first fruit this year?

The white highlights on the tree branches is fantastic, from the largest limbs towering above me...

... to the young eye-level twigs, enjoying their first of what could be hundreds of years of spring snow loadings:

The ground was still warm enough to melt the snow overnight on all paved surfaces, including the flagstones of my patios:

As much as they need it, I don't think I'll be pruning these roses this morning:

Spring snowfall of this magnitude is rare here, so it's a little exciting. Still, I think most people polled here would choose temps in the 80's over a late snowfall without a second though.

As the temperature climbs toward 40ºF/4ºC today, all of the snow will fall from the bamboos, shrubs, and everything else above ground. I'm not sure how much of the ground snow will melt either, but it's possible that all traces of this snowfall will be gone by the end of the day.

Then I can get back to watching for new bamboo shoots, planting the rest of my early-season edibles, and everything else I'm supposed to be doing in early spring -- without the snow!

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