Winter in the garden

It's wet here. Very, very wet. Picture this kind of wet. No face plants in the mud yet, but it could happen.


So, there's been a lot of gray dreary days. Every sunny day in winter is something else entirely. The sunlight changes everything ordinary into something beautiful. All of the bare branches, twigs and stalks are transformed into shimmering patterns of light and shadow. The complexity is really difficult to capture in a photograph. Most of the time I end up with what looks like a picture of a bunch of dead twigs.

Japanese beautyberries in the back yard

Swamp sunflower stalks, rose 'Sir Thomas Lipton', rugosa alba, and beautyberries.

The spillover from the neighbor's pond into their horse pasture.

Crape myrtle and Bidens stalks

Sometimes a little of the beauty comes through though. Just when I thought the autumn show was done a few very colorful leaves remain.

Oakleaf hydrangea 'Dayspring'

The Piedmont azaleas usually have some color but they outdid themselves this year.

They even reminded me of the fothergilla that I planted next to the house this fall.

A new small Fothergilla 'Mount Airy'

Although the weather has been mild in terms of freezing, rainy days in the 40's make the cats want to stay inside. On a heating pad, of course.

Tommy goes outside more than Prissy does -- typically when I am outside -- but he's been spending a lot of time inside on the couch as well.

We still haven't ordered a second apple tree to replace the one we lost, so in the interest of research I ordered 10 varieties of apples from Tree-Mendous Fruit in Michigan. Next year I need to order the apples earlier. The taste was still there but my number one criterion for an apple is crispness and these were a little soft. Also, Tree-mendous was out of some of the apples that I wanted to try, such as 'Gravenstein'.

The hydrangea and azalea leaves aren't the only leaves left. Several roses still have leaves that turned very late. Below is a mystery China/Gallica cross nicknamed Delia's Purple.