Happy New Year! We started celebrating on New Year's Eve Eve with Chinese. Thank heaven, and cousin Tricia for homemade gingerale. What's the point of snow? Sledding! Who cares if it's only 15 degrees? Not Bella! We can always warm up baking cookies - and taking them to a friend. A great beginning to 2014! For more (almost) Wordlessness this Wednesday click here.
The View from the Bedroom is a new attempt to capture the passing of the seasons. Another dusting of snow which will disappear quickly. For more Wordlessness this Wednesday click here.
Winterberry, Ilex verticillata, is a native deciduous holly. Its tiny white flowers appear in midsummer, and in the fall beautiful red berries add their color to the autumnal show. Winterberries are dioecious, which is to say that it takes a male and a female plant to create those bright berries. If you are adding winterberries to your garden it is important to order a male and female. Only the female will produce berries, but it only takes one…
The weather outside is frightful 29 degrees, breeze and clouds. Have to get the firewood in out of the snow. The birch is weeping golden tears. The holly with its scarlet berries doesn't mind the wind and snow. For more Wordlessness this Wednesday click here.
The Sunday Record of the Bedroom View shows winter is coming in on snowy feet. The 'first' snow came and went in pretty quick order, and this overnight snowfall is slightly more substantial. Do you think it means we might have a snowier, wetter winter this year? I will take precipitation in any form. 35 degrees at 8 a.m.
How do you identify the first snowfall of the year? I woke to 32 degree temperatures and a snow shower. but I don't think it qualifies as the first snowfall. It is nothing like the October 29 snowfall of 2011. However, it does qualify as the prompt to finish stacking the firewood.
On February 25 I took a photo of the tulips I was forcing. This little pot of bulbs was clearly not developing at the same time. But even as the most advanced tulip began to decline, the others were just coming into bloom. As I watched the decline of my tulips, the colors changing, the petals crinkling I was reminded of a practice at a meditation center I once read about. On the first day of a week…
Over the week the snow has been refreshed by snow showers. Drifts and plow banks by the roadsides remain deep and high. It still feels like deep winter. For more Wordlessness this Wednesday click here.
Outside snow is blowing across my hill. Inside the greenhouses at Mt Holyoke and Smith College tulips are beginning to bloom. On March 2 the greenhouses welcome the public to the Annual Bulb Shows. For more Wordlessness this Wednesday morning click here.
Almost March, but it still feels like deep winter. Everything is white and still. The Bridge of Flowers in Shelburne Falls is icy. And closed. Salmon Falls and the Potholes are frozen. Winter has not lost its hold