Round Robin: Wintering in Outer Space

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DENVER, Colorado—I admit it: I watch TV. There, I said it, even if it doesn’t fit the image that gardeners usually prefer to project. Don’t get me wrong. I’m no couch potato. During the growing season, I rarely have a spare moment, and I’m lucky if I catch the evening news.

In winter, however, I like snuggling up in a comfy armchair while the snow falls and tuning in to a favorite program like “Star Trek” or “The X-Files”. I’m sure there must be gardeners who spend the entire season doing constructive craft projects that involve dried flowers and herbs, twigs, moss, and a glue gun, not to mention figures of cherubs, cats, ducks, bunnies, cows, and other barnyard creatures. I would sooner cough up a fur ball. That, of course, is simply one man’s point of view—one whose imagination is fired more by the possibility of extraterrestrial life than by a craft fair.

There is a bright side to receiving some herbal objet d’art-and-craft as a gift. Most are flammable (if one tries hard enough), and there’s nothing like a crackling fire while one watches TV. My attention is usually distracted by other matters, however, such as scanning seed and nursery catalogs.

I also attend to a sun porch filled to capacity with potted plants—refugees from the winter cold. It’s difficult to squeeze more than a hundred pots from the patio onto my tiny porch. In this scruffy group are variegated Cuban oregano (Plectranthus forsteri and P. madagascariensis), bay, aloe, Jerusalem sage (Phlomis fruticosa), and several species of salvia. The bathroom and laundry room windows, which face south and west, are lined with pots of scented geraniums and tender tropicals.

It’s futile to worry much about how they look. I’ve cut their water by half, and they’re not getting any fertilizer until February and March, when the days lengthen and the sun’s rays strengthen. Then they’ll get groomed and pinched. In the meantime, they’re a leaf-dropping mess. I treated them with a dormant oil spray before I brought them indoors, so my battles with whiteflies should not reach intergalactic proportions this year.

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