The Status Of The Freeze Dried Bamboo

When talking of growing bamboo, the word slow is not an adjective that is going to be used very often. You are more likely to hear about new bamboo shoots growing a foot a day. Freeze dried bamboo recovering from -8 degrees is an agonizingly slow process though. Week after week passes and from a distance, the bamboo is still a crispy brown.

Leaf by leaf it is turning green. The old canes are leafing back out. That is better than them being frozen to the ground, even if the recovery is slow.

From threat of death to new life is a slow process.

The strangest thing is this season's new culms. They came up, grew a foot tall and pretty much stopped. Normally you see them coming up one day and the next day they are poking above the old foliage. The new shoots grow fast. Not this year. Are they going to be stunted? Is all I'm going get this year a frilly fringe around the bottom of the bamboo?

At least the cold hardy, clumping, Fargesia bamboo is alive. There are a few other allegedly cold hardy plants in the garden looking quite dead.

Lorelei the reliable is blooming, even if it is a bit subdued compared to blooms past. The rest of the bearded iris were so shocked by the late freeze they have refused to bloom so far. They are supposed to be blooming now.

I'm not sure what coreopsis this is. It is vigorous though and does well competing in the Lush. In proper gardens it spreads pretty quickly.

The new computer process is also moving along quickly and so far pretty smoothly. This blog post comes to you from a new operating system and the not used enough Picasa photo editor program. I had it on my old computer, but never made the switch from the Kodak program that came with my cameras. Old dog, new tricks, you know how it goes.

Aggravation is a great motivator for change. I have been forced to move on to better things. So be it.