i have good intentions of writing another post dedicated entirely to our winter garden. one of my favorite things to photograph is nature, up-close. i was in the yard today and captured some images to share ahead of a winter garden post, which may feature less life & more ice.
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| pink perfection camellia |
seeing a camellia bloom in january is, immediately, pure happiness. it is a startle of beauty to glance at the dark green leaves and find bubblegum pink petals defying the season. but this is swiftly followed by regret. because i know, even if it doesn't, that temperatures will drop soon and it will not survive. this particular camellia blooms in the winter every single year. and i am always surprised. how can i forget this? today, i checked all the other camellias in the garden, and their buds are squeezed tightly shut. but not the pink perfection. it is the optimistic camellia.
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| Rose of Sharon seed pods |
in our yard, i almost consider the Rose of Sharon (
hibiscus syriacus) to be a weed. and i love my flowering weeds! i am busy cultivating as many flowering weeds in our yard as is possible. (and by 'cultivating,' i mean allowing nature to take its course.) so there is the rose of sharon, which pops up all over the yard - wherever the mower cannot go. they are quick-growing, leggy things. more shrub than anything that will ever be a 'tree.' but they bloom in late summer, when most of the garden is fading in the heat; and they rebound from haphazard pruning like nobody's business. my only complaint is that they are typically pink. (if you read my november garden post, you will recall my issues with this color.)
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| fallen oak |
at some point, Joseph dragged this fallen oak limb into the yard from its resting place along the fence (where it was to
very slowly rot alongside other limbs too big to consider putting out for the yard-waste truck). apparently, it marks the out-of-bounds line when he and Samuel are playing football and cannot be moved. so i took a picture of it.
the new year brought some cold but sunny days, and i would often prefer to do gardening chores than
absolutely any chore inside the house. so, outside i went. we had two leaf pick-ups this autumn, which is not enough for the amount of leaves & the pace of our raking. over the years in this treefull house, i have added to our yard bucket stockpile - and, on a good day of gardening, i can easily fill up every single one. the number of buckets is just about equal to the point of my exhaustion. today, i raked. and raked. and raked. i raked with an intensity verging on aeration. & it was very satisfying. (& lucky me, there's still more raking to do, saved for another day - when the buckets are empty.)
& i found a woolly bear! who can resist, upon discovery of a woolly bear, writing an ode? certainly not i.
the woolly bear
i found a woolly bear
when turning over a log
in the garden.
it was curled like a cheese doodle
in a state of hibernation.
a band of mahogany with a black cap
on either end
had me unsure which to greet.
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| our woolly bear caterpiller |
i helped Joseph
create a habitat for the hibernating woolly bear (we were going to burn the wood s/he was currently calling home, so it was the least we could do). cross your fingers!
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| there s/he is, between the stick & the leaf! |
it gradually moved its sleepy little self under some dead leaves in the jar &, later, disappeared from view altogether. hopefully we will have good news to report in the spring, but i fear we disturbed it midway through its winter's sleep (you are supposed to capture them in october). i almost feel compelled to name it - any suggestions?
