surviving bekana

Last night was supposedly 26° (I didn't get up at the coldest point to check) so I cut all the lettuces beforehand- light leafy simpsons

and the darker romaine/ceasar, webb wonder and crisp mint.

(The sad thing is my kids don't appreciate it. My oldest said yesterday when I made a salad: "I don't like your lettuce, Mom. Why don't you grow iceberg lettuce?" Gah!) Cut the lettuces because I didn't want to find them all a frozen slushy mess the next morning, but I pushed mulch up against the tokyo bekana and covered all of those with plastic cloches. They are just fine (and have less slug damage):

I also tossed more leaf mulch and an upended pot over my lemon balm, which is still green, knowing there's more warm days ahead might as well keep it going a bit longer.

The rest of the plants, just have mulch. I didn't even cover my camellia. Rhododendron leaves droop and curl at night. Sweet alyssum just keeps on thriving! This is why I bought seeds of several colors, I'd love to have this edging the front bed next spring/summer/fall- heck maybe all year round! right now that space I extended is just a wide swath of leaf mulch, I need something in there to look decent late in the season and I bet this will be it.

Another plant doing fine even though it's colder, is the sculpit. Its leaves are twice from in spring!

I ate some in scrambled eggs with tatsoi yesterday. It's not my favorite taste, but I want to find ways to use a plant that does so well in the early spring/late fall.