First Snow of this winter

It was beautiful... But thankfully just a short lived snow. Sunday morning last week, I think just a week after the beautiful warm Halloween evening on Friday, we had our first snow.

The view was quite lovely from the bathroom window as we dragged ourselves out of bed, and so, since it really wasn't all that cold outside, I put on some shoes and a sweater and went outside to grab a few photos.

I think I have taken more photos of this yard in the last year than anything else. Far more than can be reasonably added to this blog. This is the bane of digital photography - it is so easy to just keep snapping shots, and so difficult to cull through them. The space they take up on hard drives is huge. But I suppose it isn't as huge as the boxes of old photos that I have from my grandparents and parents.

The pond is basically ready to be put away for the winter. But we haven't had time to try to rescue any of the fish. We did manage to acquire a new filter and set up the aquarium in the basement. I hope the ice stays away until next weekend so we can try to capture at least one or two of the big guys in here to save them for next spring's larger version. I've decided to let some of the plants around the pond go, so we can expand and deepen it. Lee and LIn's pond is really only a little bigger than ours, but they are able to keep it open all winter and find much to watch even in the coldest weeks. Their fish reproduce and multiply, and they don't have to deal with them in the house over the winter.

This shot is of one of the sedum clumps at the sides of the vegetable garden. Some small creature has been digging down and around the roots of the plant and has managed to weaken the stems so that they aren't able to stand on their own. The main reason I love sedums is the structure of the plant in the fall, so this is something of a theft of all my hard work over this season. I think I'll have to dig it up and replant it this fall, hoping that it is able to establish itself well enough to re-grow in the spring. I'll leave some as they are just in case.

This is a photo of the east side of the house, after one growing season. Last spring I dug and killed pretty much everything here, hoping to re structure things and create some more mature beauty. I've had to use some Round-Up here and there, and I like it so far, but it has not managed to live up to my vision yet. Maybe next year.

Shooting Stars and Iris Blooms

The shooting star is at the height of its beauty now. Soon it will fade and we won't even be able to find the plant in another month. But now it is spectacular.

And the white iris is also at the top of its form, with the first blossom on each inflorescence open and the others swelling. Very lovely. The iris season sneaks up on me each year. It seems that no buds can be found and suddenly they are all open. I know this is usually around the first of June, as I have often given a bouquet of them to Terry for his birthday. The whites come earlier than the others.

As noted earlier, there are 8 yards of wood chips in the driveway, and the big chore for this Memorial Day weekend is hauling them around the yard and spreading them out. Its easy in the beds where I have been disciplined and haven't let too many things grow in every little space. But there really aren't many places like that in this yard, so the spreading is slow going, fiddley bits. For the most part, Bill hauls and I fill in the bare spots with shovelfuls, though he did get into making a new border for the bed under the bird feeders and while he dug and installed the edging I hauled a couple of wheelbarrows full.

The east side of the house had become overgrown again with ferns and daylilies. My intention is to clean up that area, and we planted several new hydrangeas and hardy hibiscus, as well as some clematis to climb the new trellis. So today, now that I have given away many of the ferns and ensured that there were enough growing in the woods to keep Bill happy, I cut them all back again and spread a nice thick layer of chips. I'm sure I'll have to keep them cut back for some time, perhaps even spray a bit of herbicide eventually. But that garden does look neater now.

The lilac is blooming, the tulips are mostly fading, but the alliums are coming on. The night temperatures are still not getting above 45, and sometimes down to below 40, so I'm still reluctant to plant things out. The greenhouse is still up, and most things are still safely inside of it. I hope I can plant before the week is done.