December 2006
The November 25/26th snowfall is slowly disappearing. The stuff can never go fast enough. Main traffic routes have been without snow since the 30th, but, as I'm writing
this December 3rd there is still plenty of snow and slush on 
the roads in the subdivision. The snow pack is going through a daily cycle of thaw and freeze, which can create some most unusual formations. In the backyard we have a couple of cast concrete
figures of Rottweilers around , which sometimes tend to find a spot on the caps of the planter boxes. I kinda like the way one of these statuettes is popping
out of the snow again, makes it look as if it's surveying the neighbourhood.
By the time all the snow had fallen there must have been around 12 inches or so
on the cap of the fence. I was quite fascinated with the way it melted, creating this sort of tunnel effect around the post caps.
Thank goodness it's all gone now. There are of course still the
piles of snow in the mall parking lots, but that's the only reminder of what we had to deal with 2 weeks ago.
It gets dark rather early these days of course -winter solstice is less than a week away- so I don't have much of an opportunity to see what's happening in the yard except for weekends. And when you start looking around you see all kinds of indicators that life goes on in nature. There are a half a dozen Honeysuckle cuttings that are all budding up nicely and they're not the only sign.
Not far away, in the planter with the red Maple, we see not just the Dutch Iris' popping up, which you would expect,
but there are plenty of Snowdrops poking their noses through the soil. They've had their obligatory cold spell, temperatures are well above freezing again, so, it's time for us
to make our presence known I guess.
Elsewhere in the garden we see lots of new growth on the Bearded Iris' around and in the front yard some tulips are poking out. All ample reminders that while we have yet to go into winter, the cycle of life continues.
We took some divisions off a couple of our herbaceous Peonies
and they're just trucking along. It's a little early though to start looking for Hosta noses......
Our Hellebores are showing steadily swelling flower buds. This
early emerging unknown cultivar is usually in bloom by the New Year and sure looks as if it will be again this year.
Speaking of Hellebores, a lady who's been coming to our plants sales
every year since we started, was gracious enough to give us one of her Helleborus seedlings last year and look, it will flower for us this season already. By the
looks of the colour of the bud it would appear to be a light coloured one, possibly even white, we'll know soon enough.
We're past the winter solstice at this point and winter 2006/2007 has begun. Click here to go from fall into winter.
