Black Friday In The Garden, Photos by Amy

  After a busy day with terrific food and family time yesterday, I awoke very early this morning.  It was not to hop in the car to go shopping.  I don't do that on the day after Thanksgiving.  I was feeling dizzy and queasy and thought the day was going to be a disaster. Then while sitting in the kitchen eating breakfast, I noticed brilliant flashes of blue outside the kitchen window.  I immediately thought of bluebirds, but that seemed like wishful thinking.  A few minutes later a bird came back and sat on top of one of the bluebird houses.  Both Amy and Ed saw him.  The brilliant blue, reddish throat and white tummy made it definite.  Bluebirds on November 24 would have to go down as something special in any garden journal!  Just seeing them made me feel a little better.

 Bluebirds and beautiful blue skies called for a walk in the garden with the camera and Amy.  Actually she did most of the walking and I spent a lot of time sitting on the garden bench in the sunshine. Here we have  the backside of a sunflower.  What an interesting place to leave your sunflower seeds.

Howling winds have blown most milkweed seeds away,  but these two pods are still waiting for these seeds to have a chance to fly away on their silken fluff.

This milkweed seed is hung up in the top of a catnip plant.

Cold has turned the hens and chicks a lovely red.  The prickles on the end of each leaf are perfect for snagging milkweed fluff.  I don't see any seeds here. Perhaps they have been eaten or maybe I will be pulling tiny milkweed plants out of the hens and chicks in the spring.

This unknown Sedum was a stowaway in the pot of another purchased plant.  I planted it on top of Ed's curved wall.  It shows an interesting tangle of textures, shapes, color and light. 

Prickly and soft, red and white, light and shadow make this photo a favorite!

Moss and lichens adorn the top of this stone wall.  Hazelnut catkins add a little more interest! 

The side view of the same rock adds another dimension.  There are always interesting things to see in the garden. Walking there with someone special who notices is perfect!

Come Walk With Me

On this beautiful sunny 40 degree day, we absolutely had to  head outside with the camera for a walk around.  The snow has melted quite a bit and there are things to see.  We headed over to the area where the sun melts the snow off the south facing slope of the gravel bank hill.  It is easiest to walk there after the snow has flattened the prickers.   There are many patches of this interesting lichen growing there.  They are brittle hard when dry and easily broken if stepped on, but soft when wet.

Beautiful soft green mosses grow there too, revealed by the melting snow.  Finding bright green plant growth as winter is drawing toward its end is a special treat.

I was fascinated by the round marks in the snow.  I can only guess that they were made by water dripping from the trees overhead.

I always look for this creeping evergreen that Mom always called princess pine.  I was quite surprised to see the two orange and black milkweed bugs.  Apparently they were drawn out into the winter sunlight from their sheltered spot just like us.
 

We wandered around the garden for awhile. Ed was able to get a great closeup of the catkins on the hazelnut we planted there.   Without the steep south facing slope  a thin layer of snow still covers just about everything here.   There were many tracks in the snow, but there has been enough melting to make identification difficult.  I was only really sure about the turkeys.   The  retreating of the melted snow left the impression of very large bird feet.

We continued on and walked down the lane to the  other side of the gravel bank.  I never noticed the intertwined branches of  this tree before.  They wind around each other in a sort of embrace or perhaps it is  more of a slow motion strangulation in process with the two branches struggling for control.  Either way I love the way it looks.

Snow still clings north facing slope of the gravel bank.    The remains of a snowball that rolled down the hill sits at the bottom of its track in the snow.  It started small at the top and grew as it rolled down the hill.  It's not unlike the process used to build a snowman  except that gravity is doing the work.  This is the last of our pictures today.  There was one more I would have liked to add of our footprints side by side in the snow, but the battery on the camera begged to be charged so that picture  will wait for another day and another walk.

Spring For A Day

Today our weather was almost unbelievable. It is December 4 in upstate New York and the temperature in the shade reads 62 degrees.  Whatever else I might have planned to do, the pull to walk around the garden with the camera  was stronger.  I stuck close to the house like the smartest of the deer in our neighborhood.  I don't feel comfortable walking the paths in the woods while there is possibility of running into folks with guns and Buck Fever.

Everywhere I walked the ground was thawed.  The red color of these yarrow leaves caught my attention.  They are not the flowers that I miss so much, but are still lovely.

So many of the plants are showing new growth in preparation for spring. This picture of catkins on the hazelnut with green grass, trees and blue sky in the background hardly brings December to mind.  I enjoyed our breath of spring even if it only lasted for a day.  As I write this a cold front is blowing through.  Tomorrow we will be back to December's chill, rain and perhaps snow, but today was fantastic!