Mother Nature's Revenge!

After several year's of relatively mild winters, the dark side of mother surfaced again this month.  In January we had a hard freeze that brought temperatures down to the mid 20's for a couple of days.  Now, just a few weeks later we are back in Mother Nature's deep freeze.  All I can say is that I hate cold weather!!!!!!!!   I know this is going to be a major setback to my hybridizing program.  My motto in times of crisis has always been, "deal with it and move on", and that's what I will do. 

I knew going into winter I would be gambling with the weather.  I was betting on another mild winter, and I lost my bet.  Hey, were in a period of global warming, winters are supposed to be warmer than usual, right?  I had planned to build a shade structure last fall to protect my plants, but time was not on my side.  It did not help that I grew many more seedlings that I had planned. I know being a pack rat contributed to that.  When more seeds than expected germinated from a cross, I planted them all rather just plant 20-30 seedlings as a trial.  That will change this year for sure.

Now the waiting game begins to see how many seedlings recover.  To keep myself from getting too bummed about this, I remind myself that even if I lost 2,000 seedlings to the back to back freezes, I have over 6,000 more that survived and may be blooming this year!