In late October, the morning temperature was cool enough to produce this interesting scene. Notice the frost on the house. The frost formed or was left only in the shadow of the the tree (Parottia persica 'Vanessa'). Very cool.
Thanks to birthday donations from Aunt Iris and Shirley, Jeff and I went shopping at the local nursery's 40% off sale in November. This is a great time to shop, especially since here in the NW, fall is a great time to plant new plants.
Here is one of my exciting new shrubs (many of you are rolling eyes, I know). Stachyrus praecox should be a great addition for the winter garden once it grows a little because it blooms in February or so. Check out this link for a picture of the leaves and flowers http://www.vanklaverensnursery.com/plants/Stachyruspraecox.pdf .
Oak leaf hydrangea (Hydrangea quercifolia) will be a great addition in all four seasons with spectacular blooms in the summer and beautiful folliage in the fall. Check out this link for more pictures http://www.hydrangeashydrangeas.com/oakleaf.html .
The last week of school before winter break brought news of an impending storm which was expected to include temperatures not exceeding freezing for many days, snow, wind and general mayhem. Sounds like regular winter stuff to most of you. Western Washington hasn't seen the likes of this type of winter weather since 1991, which happened to be the year we moved out here from Minnesota. We didn't think a lot of it in 1991 since it was still a lot milder than Minnesota. We have become soft since then and the necessity of planting all my new "babies" became rather urgent. In a light jacket over about 2 days, I planted 28 or so plants including 18 4 inch creeping raspberry ground cover plants.
Usually the spectacular nature of a storm is inversely proportional to the amount the weather people talk about it. By that measure, this storm should have been a non-event. Can you believe they got it right? Well they did. We had at least a week with largely below freezing weather and 8 inches to a foot of snow.
Here is the view of the garden out the living room window. The street just beyond the fence became the neighborhood sledding hill. No one hurt themselves on the fence, but a mailbox down to the right a bit suffered as did the person who tangled with it. Nothing major though.
Jeff's fence was even more beautiful with the addition of snow.
The snow is gone now except for a few random blobs. The start of a new year has me thinking of breaking out the seed starting lights and shelves to get going on this year's crop of garden additions. I think I'll go see if the crocuses are up yet. Happy New Year!
