Don't let the draw of that cozy, warm fire keep you from venturing out into winter's cold. This season can be so amazingly beautiful . All you have to do is bundle up your skin and open your eyes to take it all the striking scenes so frequently left unnoticed. Here are some I've captured in my own yard this winter.
Garden as if life depended on it! Doug Tallamy wrote these words in my copy of his book, Bringing Nature Home. No, I'm not a special friend or acquaintance, he wrote similar, if not identical words inside all the books he signed that day. On the other hand, though, I am special. I'm a gardener with extraordinary power … I can choose to plant whatever I want. You are also extraordinary, as you have exactly the same power as I. And if we, as gardeners, do just a little of what Tallamy suggests – increase the number of native plants growing in each of our gardens– we, individually and together, may be able to make a significant difference in the nature of our future.
Winter months present northern gardeners with ample opportunities to slow down and reflect, and in doing so I began to wonder how a quote I live by has guided my gardening path.
I've been following the yellow brick road through the AutoSketch forest, where apple tossing tree symbols and a wicked witch of the west (the instructions, not my instructor), cackling 'You must follow these directions exactly, my little pretty!' tried to thwart my progress to the Emerald City (completing the AutoSketch training module) and my meeting with the Wizard (completing the drawings for Lesson 3 of my landscape design course). The good witch, Glinda, was right. Ruby slippers did not let me down. Yes, I had a slight setback – the witch's flying monkeys swooped down and threw a slight hitch into my computer when I was installing the pdf writer necessary for converting the skf files of AutoSketch to pdf files. But my trusty traveling companions– the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, that lovable Cowardly Lion, and of course Toto (I'll leave my family members to guess who is who) – came to my rescue and let me be so I had time to complete lesson 3 before the hourglass ran out. And in spite of the witch's roadblocks, and the Professor/Wizard's hot air balloon releasing into the stratosphere unexpectedly early, my ruby slippers brought that little bit of magic that allowed me to find my way back to Kansas … which, in my case, involved turning the page to lesson 4.
A view of some foliage from my snow-covered gardens reveals some still green herbs frozen in time ( I'd show a photo of thyme here, but it's all under snow). An earlier fast freeze caught both my Golden Edged sage and Hidcote lavender with some color still in their leaves. Look closely … very closely. You'll see it. Northern gardeners learn to take pleasure in the slightest hint of green during our white and grey winters. Usually the sage leaves turn brown and fall, so it's fun to seen them fast-frozen, color and all. I doubt this anomaly will last long – the temperatures in Connecticut might reach 40 degrees today. But the lavender will likely hold it's grey-green foliage until closer to spring, when I'll cut back it's tired stalks to allow fresh new growth.
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