TaMara was kind enough to share some of her photos for our Sunday morning enjoyment:
The beauty of a winter garden. The majority of my yard is native plants, butterfly, bee, and hummingbird attractors and we are encouraged to leave everything as-is through the winter and spring for the wildlife to enjoy. I have to say, besides being easier to take care of, it sure can be pretty.
Echinacia and oat grass
Several lavender plants
Ornamental grasses
Lambs ear and another echinacea
Zebra grass and bonus ducks
The resident crocodile. He came with the house and I think he should have a name
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A bit of a break from winter..I went to LA for a week. Here are some December sunrises and sunsets:
Golden Hour sunrise at Venice Beach
Sunset at Santa Monica Pier
Santa Monica sunset
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Assuming there’s any space in the holiday schedule… What’s going on in your garden (wrap-up / maintenance / planning), this week?
Reader Interactions
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MazeDancer
Lovely photos! Hoping that birds are enjoying my “left for Spring” plants. Though, they may be so full of bird seed, they don’t notice the natural stuff.
eclare
Love the crocodile!
raven
Dogtown and Zboys!’The way it was!
OzarkHillbilly
I was gonna send in a “Dead Flowers” set for the garden thread, but Tamara beat me to it. Story of my life.
Thanx for the lovely pics Tamara.
Jeffg166
With only 86 days until spring I am now under the gun to get the garden cleaned up. It might get done by then.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Thank you for inviting us to see the beauty in places I usually just walk on by.
HinTN
It’s been warm here and there are tiny green bumps of daffodils poking up in spots. Silly daffodils!
Tennessee Winters are always an adventure. Somewhere I have pix of daffs blooming on 31 January and late one March it snowed well over a foot on Friday afternoon, only to be melted by Monday.
OzarkHillbilly
I have had that experience on several occasions, maybe not a foot of snow tho.
CarolM
Thank you for the pictures of your winter garden, I love the colors and textures! I’ll be spending my vacation time between Christmas and New Year’s Day getting my native seeds potted and set outside for outdoor germination. Hopefully I’ll grow some echinacea plants and bee balm this year as well as some other natives that feed the wildlife.
Trivia Man
Our new neighborhood is about 70% “no mow may” people and I love it. This year I made an effort to get rid of invasives – buckthorn especially, next year I’d like to bring in more prairie stuff and encroach on my lawn even more. It’s already a good chunk “wild” but I still have lawn.
Kristine
Thank you for the photos! I’ve come to appreciate plants that leave something for winter.
I left the goldenrod, sedum, boneset, and Sweet Joe Pye Weed stalks alone during yard clean-up. Looks like most of the seeds are gone. I’ll cut them down in the spring.
2-3 years ago I found a common juniper growing in a window well. At first I stuck it in a pot and left it on the deck, where it survived heating and freezing and being buried in snow—after that, I decided hey it might make it, so I planted it this past summer. It’s a variety that turns purple-brown in cold weather, so it stands out. Amazing to watch it slowly turn green as the days warm.
satby
Good morning everyone! Nice photos TaMara! I leave all my stuff over winter, including most of the fallen maple leaves. I enjoy seeing the birds chowing down on the seeds, especially the ninebark seeds that cardinals seem to love. Unseasonably warm here for the next few days, though overcast with occasional light showers, so no garden activity for me!
oldgold
Here in the outer rim of the twilight zone, traditionally we have stopped mowing in early October. Of course, that was before Helenski became the new Riviera.
Having transitioned my lawn from
blue grassassorted weeds to glechoma hederaceae, I no longer mow, except for the spears of blue grass that have long mocked me by flourishing in the driveway cracks, akin to the hairs that now, in the springtime of my dotage, thrive on the bridge of my nose, while my dome has been fully liberated from follicular growth.Yesterday, Christmas Eve Eve, my red capped and sulfurously scented neighbor from Hell, Dee Dee Plorable and her on again – off again, mostly on, judging from their nightly caterwauling, Phil Anders, were hard at work, for hours, mowing their green and growing lawn.
Seeing an opportunity to break the ice that has long separated us, I yelled over the 10 foot barbed wire topped wall, she paid for, “Double D, how is that climate denialism working out? Dee Dee, “OG, snow shovel it where the sun don’t shine!” Ah, Peace on Earth Goodwill to Men!