Forsythia

lovely.....

I like them. They look cheerful in the spring. Pitty they are so rare there. You could take a cutting and try it in your garden lol

TY. I would be the crazy for sure then, the office women watched me creep around the back of their building to take this.....lol. I've noticed I only see them in hot southern well protected areas. I haven't got anything like that in my garden. I'm going to try the Prunus triloba, Rose Tree of China again. Now they are blooming. I tried it in a large box but I think it would prefer the ground. Our spring is well on now! Many photos, little time....lol.

i use to have one of these,they are really lovely and cheerful.

They would be a welcome bright spot in spring. But such a danger for loss I must go without. We've a siberian pea shrub but it can be very invasive.

It surprised me when you said they are not common over there! They are as hard as nails, they will tolerate practically any amount of cold. They are very common in the parks in Cuenca, in the middle of the Spain. The winters there are by far & away much colder than here in the UK. They also came through our hardest winter in 30 years without a problem.

I know our hardest winters can't hold a candle to your "mildest" winters but if one can make it through so can any number of these lovely bushes. I can't imagine spring without Forsythias!

Problem Balcony is, if you don't lose it, you never see a flower. Many spring bloomers start during warm moment far too early and then the after freeze kills off all the buds. I wouldn't be surprized to find many garden with this shrub but never the blooms. I know they can take a frost, but we can warm to frost in Feb and then drop back to -30C. I'd be trying it if I had a foundation. It blooms very poorly even in the botanical garden where they test many things and give a lot of attention. There they have a nice warm southern slope as well, colder than that at my house.

Our "coldest" winter in 30 years was positively "tropical" for you then! I knew you reached many more degrees below freezing than we do here but I never imagined it was sooo ccccoolllddd! LOL!

I've experienced minus 14C in Spain but can't imagine living at minus 30C!!!

If only that was the low. I was averaging. :-) I've seen -55. Foundations can keep the soil temp much higher, but my cabin is on piling.

How can you possibly survive through such terrible cold let alone live? It's beyond my imagination trying to think how one can possibly live through such low temps!

You seem to be living in a wooden cabin, not a properly insulated house with brick walls & double (or triple) glazing & the central heating roaring all day! LOL!

With temps of "only" -4C we were frozen. After the 2 weeks away in central Spain for Christmas-New Year we returned to a flat that seemed colder than an Eskimo's igloo! Both my wife & I caught colds that took a couple of months to clear away completely! I expect the cold & flu viruses over there die with such low temps. As they thrive among the human population they obviously don't!

Colds seem the same. We're all locked in somewhere, but not more sickness, just a little crazy due to the lack of sunlight more than the cold. Log cabins are solid against the cold, great sold rating as long as the chinking is done well. I;ve a little diesel furnace that heats and circulates though the temp goes up and down 5 degrees, it works well, not chilly at all. -55 you can feel the draft even through the triple pane glass. I have my big grow light on to let the 'sun' rise and set every day. You do get used to it, just different. Some never take to it at all I guess. I love the silence and emptiness of the cold. -30, we still have people on bicycles, if you can believe it.