February is a fickle month..some are balmy, others chilly and wet.  February 2010 is cooler than normal, but the shivering may be worth it because rain is falling from the Austin sky.  If you need a warm up recipe during gray days, click back  to February 1999 and try a tasty tomato soup.    Rainy days create a yard of promise.  Lettuce, the focus of last month's page, continues to produce for salads.  Spinach, mâche, young kale and chard leaves and herbs such as chervil, parsley, salad burnet and lemon balm are tossed with the lettuce.  (See Rappahannock Cook & Kitchen Gardener for a nice article about mâche)  Cauliflower heads are the size of tennis balls and growing quickly.  Arugula flowers signal declining flavor but rain makes it the perfect time for sprinkling more seeds in the beds.

February is a busy time in the garden for Ann Marie, pansies, snapdragons, and statice must be enjoyed, but the most important task is to don heavy gloves and prune roses on Valentines Day.  This is also the perfect day to transplant rose bushes or plant new ones, get your honey to help!  Sweet lavender (Lavandula xheterophylla) will also be pruned back quite hard.  The bush has a beautiful shape but years of experimenting in the gardens at Festival Hill have proven to Ann Marie that hard pruning in late winter yields more lavender blossoms.  Many cuttings of scented pelargoniums have rooted and are being potted up, more cuttings will be taken.  One can never have too many baby pellies, visitors to the garden love to take them home.   At the end of the month all perennials will be pruned and the almond verbena (Aloysia virgata) will be cut back to twelve inches in order to keep it a manageable size in this small urban garden.

February is also the time to begin planning strategies for the spring and summer garden.  Do mail order catalogs tempt with seeds of new basils?  What needs to be replaced after this winter’s hard freezes?  Are there plants to be divided and shared?  One way to help make these decisions is to attend various plant fairs and garden lectures.  The most important event for Ann Marie is the Herbal Forum at Festival Hill in Round Top, scheduled for Saturday, March 20th.  The theme this year is “Creativity with Herbs” and speakers such as Felder Rushing (Garden Beautification -- Southern Style) and Marie Butler (I Have  an Elephant is My Garden, So What’s Your Problem?) promise to delight and inspire.  Register in advance for the lectures and workshops.  The plant sale associated with it is open to the public and begins at 9:00 am on Friday, March 19th and 7:00 am on Saturday, March 20th.  Mark your calendar now!