Wunderground.com says the nearest (unofficial) weather station to me is currently registering a temperature of 47 F with a windchill of 41 F. Accuweather.com says the nearest official weather station to me is currently registering 49 F but that the sharp, cold gusts mean the air actually feels like it’s 36 F. I’ve just been outside digging up more plants and I can say it sure does feel that way. The wind is so cold it numbed my fingers, and the soil feels frigid. Last night they had changed the forecast to where it was supposed to be in the upper 30s F again tonight (as the last two nights) but I was suspicious of this assertion given the way the weather has been feeling, and wasn’t overly surprised to see that when I got up this morning they had revoked the changed forecast and had issued a Frost Advisory, my town’s first one of the autumn. There is alreaady no more basil at the farmers’ market, no more cut flowers, no more melons or okra, and only greenhouse-grown tomatoes and eggplants. (All the farms are farther away from the city than I am, and always get frost before we do.)
Yesterday I dug up the Cuban oregano and the Aztec sweet herb and potted them up in an emergency pot. Aztec sweet herb turned out to have rooted as it went along, and its extra roots were dangling in the air. I thought I’d repot it this morning and it would be OK. By the time I got up, though, it had begun to wilt, starting at the tips of its woody branches and working inwards towards the center of the plant. I repotted it into a window box where it can wander around to its hearts content today, so hopefully it will recover. Since it seemed to do pretty well underplanted with taller things this year, I added two lantanas that I dug up today to the window box too. I dug up ‘Samantha,’ the variegated-leaf, yellow-flowering one I mentioned yesterday, and ‘Red Spread.’ ‘Lavender Trailing’ is still flowering away, but it seems much easier to find locally, so I prioritized the others. In my experience, lantana can be killed by the first frost or take several frosts before dying, so we’ll see how it does tonight.
I also dug up the pineapple sage, and realized when i did so that it finally, FINALLY has tiny buds (we’ll see if it blooms indoors), and the two Cape mallows, because I read in that book on overwintering that they bloom well indoors (if only I’d known that, and how hard ‘Elegant Lady’ would be to find this season, I would have dug her up and brought her inside last autumn!!!), and the three rosemary plants (‘Arp,’ ‘Irene,’ and ‘Tuscan Blue,’ as I mentioned last entry), and the one heliotrope that didn’t die over the summer.
Only after I was inside, with cold fingers and sore knees, did I realize I’d forgotten to dig up the two other plants whose cold-hardiness I’m least sure of, Salvia discolor and the agapanthus. It was also only when I dug up the by now quite robust ‘Tuscan Blue’ that I realized that the French tarragon and the culander (Mexican coriander) were still alive as small plants at its feet. I don’t know if the fussy culander is worth digging up and keeping inside for the winter. I don’t even know if it’s possible; like with the gotu kola I brought in Friday, I’ve yet to read a single thing about overwintering it inside.
The quicksilver, centaurea ‘Colchester White,’ and the agastaches and salvais that aren’t hardy here are all still out there as well, but all but the quicksilver are hardier than the stuff I dug up, and last year taught me that a quicksilver that’s big and healthy and has been growing well all season can sustain some frost damage before actually dying, putting out new leaves to replace the frost-killed ones – though I might dig it up today anyway so that it doesn’t have to endure the damage. (By the way, quicksilver is in the same genus as Cuban oregano, Plectranthus, and they look similar to one another, with quilted fuzzy leaves, though quicksilver’s leaves are silvery and my Cuban oregano’s are pale greenish. [I say "my Cuban oregano" because there is apparently also a variegated-leaf Cuban oregano out there, its leaves edged in white.])
The past 24 hours or so have been so windy that many trees that had half or two-thirds of their leaves a day ago are now completely bare or nearly so.
Frost Advisory
National Weather Service
Statement as of 11:15 AM EDT on October 19, 2008
A frost advisory remains in effect from 2 am to 8 am EDT Monday.
Temperatures are expected to fall into the low and mid 30s late tonight. Light winds will allow areas of frost to develop.
A frost advisory means that frost is possible. Sensitive outdoor plants may be killed if left uncovered.
