Alberta Wanderings

[Hoy]

Trond- we have plenty of dandelions already! I was thinking maybe we need bears to eat them- though we'd need an awful lot! Bears are rarely seen in my immediate area (I've never seen one here, though its not totally unheard of) but by the time you go about 30-40km west its quite possible- by that distance you are in the foothills forest (though not the foothills) which extends all the way into the mountains...

I'll try to post the next set of photos tonight if my internet connection is better (wonder how many tries it will take to post this...lol)

Cohan, I assumed you wanted more bears and less dandelions

When I am at my cabin with a bad connection I use to upload one pic at the time and using the modify button to add more.

[cohan]

Probably less pics at one time is a good idea, but sometimes my connection is not simply slow, its very unstable- in the time I prepare a post it might disconnect/reconnect several times, and trying to post, esp photos is an exercise in frustration.. other times its fast and good, especially late at night, when not so many people in the area are using their smartphones!
Anyway, the tangential searching mentioned earlier has me wandering through real estate listings in southeast B.C... no I'm not moving, but its fun to look! So no pics tonight...lol

[cohan]

Lori, I am with you on those zone ratings, I was really joking above- I'll try plants that I think might have some chance based on what I can find out about where they come from, compared to conditions here.. what number is on my map wont change much
-- especially, I find, around here--- there is just not a lot of experience growing a lot of the things I am interested in, so the ratings for plants are just not that useful- especially those that are not based on anything If the zone ratings (for plants) are based on temperatures in their habitat, it at least gives you some idea to start from, though its only one factor...

These 'new' zones for Alberta are kind of dubious... we certainly still expect some zone 2 lows, even if not more than a couple of days, and maybe not every winter-- so zone 4 really seems like a stretch.. they also put Rocky Mountain House, Sylvan Lake and Calgary all in the same zone- those two towns are not quite the same as each other (there are reasons one is at the edge of foothills biome and the other is at the edge of aspen parkland!) much less either being the same as Calgary- where your winter minimums may be close to ours, but you are on average a few degrees warmer in winter! And I think Red Deer was 3b- colder than Rocky Mountain House 60km west? seems unlikely (even with a bit of additional 'chinook' advantage in Rocky, there are also more likely to be out of season frosts)

[Lori S.]

So...

Where does the Kootenay Agricultural Society come in?

Perennial Seed Germination Information:

     *INCORRECT USE OF [attachthumb=#]. You need to specify the attachment number, for example [attachthumb=1].

That's a pretty amazing germination guide.  I've printed it off.   I wonder whose experiences it's based on?  It's too bad they didn't give themselves credit for it!   

[cohan]

The season is beginning, albeit slowly and subtly- the native plants here are well aware that spring does not mean an end to freezing, so they begin cautiously- and of course snow remains in many places, and the soil is still frozen in many others, or just thawed recently...

To my surprise, I saw Petasites (likely sagittatus, but we have frigidus v palmatus and many hybrid populations- all of which are so close together that I wonder whether any of our plants are completely one species or another) budding-- only in one area, though I didn't visit any of the other earliest spots- places at the southern edge of woods that will melt relatively earlier and warm up faster; this site has maybe a further advantage: the plants are on the south side of a small raised area, several metres square, probably the remains of a brush pile that has been rotted into the soil over many decades;



many other wetland areas still have knee-deep snow!



I always loved these flowers as one of our very earliest (probably the earliest in my area, edging out Caltha and Viola, though peak bloom of all of them overlap strongly), but photographing them in the last few years, I've come to love the buds as much as anything-- odd little fuzzy wrapped grape clusters!



These plants are only a few inches tall, barely emerging above the water yet, and this water still has snow melting into it only a couple of metres away!

[Hoy]

I always loved these flowers as one of our very earliest (probably the earliest in my area, edging out Caltha and Viola, though peak bloom of all of them overlap strongly), but photographing them in the last few years, I've come to love the buds as much as anything-- odd little fuzzy wrapped grape clusters!

Promising buds are always nice to find - especially the harbingers of spring and warmer weather

[cohan]

Yes, nice to see some buds NO warmth for now, though, after some warmish days, we are supposed to head into cool and wet weather..(I'll post on weather thread...)