Weather Unsaid

Color in the front yard, these crabapples on my Red Jade will freeze and persist until spring when they will thaw and birds will pick off 90% of them.

Or words unspoken...

 

The weather is behaving absolutely gloriously. I would take a dozen days like today with bright sunshine, though short-timed, and moderate temperatures.  We will be having a string of sunny days before the temperatures dip back to highs below that golden 50 degree mark.

 

When in the garden, I turn about considering how I should make each day count for something in the scheme of my garden chores. I pulled radishes, hilled up some leeks, and collected some ripe fennel seeds. I am probably the last person on the planet cooking with fennel regularly, and wish I could tempt the bulbous stem not to go to seed each and every time I attempt to grow it for more than its seed heads. It appears I may have luck with some offshoot of my plants set out this spring.

 

Fennel seeds

Burning bush and rock cairn

Parsley

Leeks

Fennel offset

Strawberry bed with sugar maple winter leaf cover

Oakleaf hydrangea showing some color

Abiqua Drinking Gourd with some nice color

 I rely on a very small group of plants for winter color when there is no snow cover; a couple heuchera, carex, my evergreen azaleas, bergenia, and a few shrubs with colorful bark.