New year, new friends

A plant enjoyed alone is lovely. A lovely plant shared with a friend creates a pleasant memory. A pleasant memory of a plant-loving friend is priceless.

I’m sure someone has said this or something like it in the past. But I just recorded it in the words I’ve been thinking about all day. When I started this blog, I didn’t realize how much joy it would bring. Not just from the blogging, but also through interaction with fellow gardeners.

As I look ahead to 2011, I do so with hopeful anticipation. And a good portion of it is due to the new plant-loving, pleasant, lovely friends I’ve made through garden blogging. I’ve always known that gardeners are generous people. But I had no idea how many great people I’d meet through Blotanical and Good Garden Ideas and through reading and commenting on fellow bloggers’ posts.

It’s interesting, actually, how most of our blogs are not about people at all, but about our garden successes, failures, and tips and tricks. But it’s the sharing of these that makes the gardening and the blogging so very rewarding.

My wish for all gardening friends, near and far, is that you have a satisfying, successful 2011, full of lovely, pleasant gardening moments and priceless memories with plant-loving friends. Happy New Year!

Signs of life

I looked out my back window at
10:29 a.m. CST this morning and saw a dramatic play of low winter sun pouring through the Oak trees, over the hill, and into the white landscape of the back garden. (Believe it or not, this is a color photo, but my landscape is very black and white these days.)

Confession: I still had my robe and slippers on, which prevented my running outside to take this shot—so this is through the window. I took this picture with my camera phone. These are excuses, but honestly if I would have taken the time to go grab the better camera and get dressed, the shot would have been gone. At
10:31 a.m., I took a second shot and the light wasn’t nearly as dramatic. Just a little realization that we have to grab the moments while we have them.

Later in the day, I decided to break out the snowshoes and look for signs of life. There aren’t many of the plant variety. But with our recent “mild” December weather, the animals are a little more active than they were a couple weeks ago. I saw a squirrel scampering across the lot yesterday. And animal prints crisscross the white landscape and meander among the trees and branches.

The current top layer of snow is the white powdery variety, so the prints aren’t as distinct as they would be in heavier snow. But it’s fun to guess which animals created these prints.

Rabbit

Any ideas?

Various birds

Raccoon?

Deer?

Messy human

Garden blogging is a healthy activity. It’s getting me out into the fresh air and it’s fueling my creative muse. What to write about next?

White Christmas memories

“Our snow was not only shaken from white wash buckets down the sky, it came shawling out of the ground and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snow grew overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather moss, minutely ivied the walls and settled on the postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numb thunderstorm of white, torn Christmas cards...

“Always on Christmas night there was music...Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept."

Excerpts from “A Child’s Christmas in Wales,” by Dylan Thomas

Merry Christmas!

Dressed up for the holidays

We’ve had a bit of a warm-up in southern Wisconsin. Cold is relative, I guess. After suffering through days of bitter single-digit cold with below-zero wind chills, the high was a balmy 20°F today, with sunshine and next to no wind. It was warm enough for me to venture out with my camera for a quick jaunt around the garden. It was actually refreshing!

I thought I’d capture some shots of “festive” plants with red berries and seeds that really pop against the white snow.

Common Barberry (Berberis vulgaris), for example, sports particularly bright berries that are a popular food source for birds.

Cotoneaster (C. horizontalis) looks cozy, tucked under a canopy of fluffy snow. These branches are great additions to floral arrangements—particularly if you can catch them with green leaves intact and before they’re buried by snowdrifts.

Staghorn Sumac (Rhus typhina) is another great addition to floral arrangements. It’s a striking companion to sprigs of Pine and Spruce, White Carnations, Pine cones and Red Twig Dogwood.

These are just a few examples of plants that provide nonstop beauty—even in the depths of winter.