Dreaming of spring

December 25 should be the depths of winter, but this year we have a green Christmas with just a hint of snow left from the earlier, colder days. The temperature has been jumping up and down, sometimes in the space of hours. I had a bit of time today (taking a break from holidays, overeating and socializing) to go outside and finish the last bit of yard tidying that I did not get to before the first big snowfall. It is a lovely -4 (Celsius to my American readers), calm and cloudy outside giving the sky that silvery winter haze that I love. Most ironically for a gardener, I love winter most of all, especially on the days when it is above -20.

I started my day baking bread for the next few weeks, and cooking up the last bags of puree tomato from this fall's harvest. I am out of my garlic, what I did not plant back in late October has been eaten, but we bought some local Quebec garlic so at least it is local if not homegrown. It tastes awesome!

Once the baking was done, I decided that I am tired of looking out the window at clutter, and before it snows over again, I went out to organize things a bit. Some of the fun things I found in the garden today:

We did a pumpkin painting activity with students for October (it was part of a goodbye party for a colleague) and I ended up with an extra pumpkin. I roasted the seeds (yum!) but the shell was already a bit past its prime, and no one felt like trying to turn it into a pie. Given the popularity of the decorative squashes I used to decorate my sukkah as squirrel food, I decided to leave it out as an offering to the squirrels now that they have eaten all my apples and sunflower seeds. 

It turns out that they do not like pumpkin as much. Or maybe they don't like it after it has frozen. I tried to capture the ice crystals that have grown along the surface, but this is the best I could do. It looked so interesting.

My lilacs are confused, as is my magnolia. Both have put out buds. I am not too worried about the lilacs, they seem to be able to keep buds in anticipation for a long time without damage, but the magnolia was almost wiped out by early budding one year, so I am hoping this will not be a problem.

I carefully do not clean up any of my plants to leave the seeds for whatever birds and animals may be searching in the depths of winter. Anyways, that's my justification for not having the time to cut everything back in the fall once my semester has started, it just turns out that it is a good thing to do for the animals, especially birds. Many of my plants reseed and spread, so I leave the calendulas, milkweed, nasturtiums, hollyhocks and columbines to do their thing anyways. They made some nice photographs.

My parsley, green onions and thyme are still going strong despite the frozen puddles and patches of snow. There are some very robust weeds frozen into puddles where the snow melted and refroze, waiting for me to restart our war in the spring. And the periwinkle seems to stay green and strong, its ever invasive presence slowed by the ice and snow but never giving up.

A happy new year to all my readers. Thank you for your patience with my sporadic posts, and your continued faith that I will continue my photography and essays.