I’ve seen it called “blizzicane” and “blizzardageddon” and heard it referred to as “great” but I’m not sure that this storm will go down in our local history as any really great shakes. Nothing yet (knock wood) has surpassed the surprise of the legendary Blizzard of ’78 and although this certainly packed a wallop for anyone trying to go somewhere, for the rest of us tucked into a cozy Boxing Day at home, it was just a dramatic bluster. I have to admit that when the sky lit up in a bright blue flash and the power went out (briefly in the end) all over town, I simply lit candles, put on another sweater and didn’t worry – about the greenhouse, that is. What a useful tool a back-up generator is! (See previous post for a description of our worst case scenario and its timely resolution.)

And as the wind continues to howl, the gardens at least are insulated finally if not warm. The only downside to this snow cover is the weight of it – it’s a heavy sandwich of crusty layers of ice and snow and I’m sure I wasn’t the only gardener to go out in the storm (at home) to beat the bushes. — If you haven’t yet you might give your shrubs and trees a gentle whack too if they look as if they might break or become hopelessly misshapen under the load.

Another upside to snow cover is all that it teaches us about light, and the chance it gives us to see our gardens as a blank slate again. It’s a perfect way to wend our way towards a new year, appreciating the shadows (of the past) and thinking clearly about the future.

How did you and your garden fare during the Great Blizzicanemageddon of 2010?

‘Tis the season for us to count our blessings. Here in the greenhouse, Gail and I count some of our blessings by the hundreds and have just added peace of mind to our list. Today electricians installed a back-up generator at the greenhouse!

As optimistic as we gardeners generally are – especially now when our collective glass is half full of the sun’s tilt toward summer – we are also prone to gloom and doom reality checks. Can’t we all play out worst-case-scenarios as competitively as a contact sport? For years now Gail and I have been able to clearly envision a cold night. A very cold night, well below freezing. White-out blizzard conditions and snow drifted to the eaves… And some time in the wee hours a limb snaps, or a car crashes and the power goes out. The temperature in the greenhouse, which is kept in the high 30′s to 40′s, falls fast… This is the stuff our nightmares have been made of.

Despite the fact that nothing resembling that nightmare has occurred in years, Gail and I have both woken, heart thumping in the middle of the night imagining the worst. We have had makeshift contingency plans in place over the winter involving the tent heater, a portable generator, and me on call to come out in my pjs and headlamp. Even in the best of the worst case scenarios, we still imagined losing most of our plants. And to lose these plants would be a tremendous loss for the gardens. But now, due to the generosity of donors who wish to remain anonymous, the gardens’ plants are safe and we can rest easy.

The official start of winter gives us the gift of optimism – Gail and I are so grateful to be able to keep passing it along by way of our gardens.

Happy Holidays!

Thanks to Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day (hosted by Carol of May Dreams Gardens) I have gotten into the habit of checking the Higan cherry (Prunus subhirtella ‘Autumnalis’) in the Rose Garden for blooms this time of year. Just like clock-work, as of a couple of warmish days ago, it had opened a few nearly invisible flowers. (Now that the temperature has plummeted again, the safety is probably back on its bloom trigger.) I have to wonder though, what is it thinking to bloom at all in December? Will it be pollinated? Would it be able to set fruit? What’s the point?

I’m curious too about the winter heaths (Erica carnea ‘Springwood White’) beginning to bloom now – they must have willing pollinators on their native European moorlands but will they be worked on here? By whom? And the camellias in our greenhouse – ‘Debutante’ is our earliest to bloom – strike me as a little bit sad for not being likely to attract any kind of attention besides ours. (And we might be disappointed that while it looks a little bit like a rose, it doesn’t smell like one.)

I’ll admit that I have a one track mind right now and can only chalk it up to planning a feast for our pollinators in the gardens next year. Meanwhile, I know I should be grateful for any blooms that brighten a dark December even if we human gardeners are the only ones who get to enjoy them.

When I visit garden centers in the spring and summer I seem to have a hard time remembering to buy plants that will carry my garden through the winter. I forget all about my intention to buy a cartload of evergreens when I walk down an aisle of any other plant coming into leaf or bloom. I’m sure I’m not alone. (Or am I?) But it didn’t take a very long walk around Blithewold in this frigid weather to find that there are plenty of plants that could catch my eye at the nursery – and keep a good hold of it now.

I get sweetspire (Itea virginica) and summersweet (Clethra alnifolia) completely confused in my head, always thinking one is the other. I wish, back when I bought a clethra for my garden that I had remembered that it’s itea that colors up so beautifully in the fall and waves red flags right into December. (Of course I do love that clethra blooms almost by itself in August…) Oak leaf hydrangea is also stunningly multicolored in the cold.

Gail confuses agave and yucca, which is so funny because their differences are very obvious to me. (Of course they are in the same family and Gail’s the one who keeps clethra and itea straight for me.) And while I generally think agaves are the coolest plants, it’s yucca that can take the cold.

It never occurred to me that Toad lily (Tricyrtis hirta) could be as beautiful in seed as it is in bloom. And I think the purple moor grass (Molinia caerulea ‘Variegata’), with its curly blond tresses, is even more beautiful dormant than it ever was growing.

I have a deep appreciation for the evergrey of lavender – and have planted quite a few of those in my garden but I never noticed before today how silvery the slender deutzia (Deutzia gracilis ‘Nikko’) is.

What plants are carrying your garden into December?

It’s too easy to lose sight of the garden at this time of year. It’s freezing cold; we’ve gone indoors; we’re focused on the holidays. But what I realized the other day, when I took a walk through the garden is that this might be the very best time to really see the garden clearly – and not just because of the transparency of defoliation. Red and green might be the iconic colors of December but gardeners and nature lovers see a whole range of hues in our field of vision. December is rendered in quiet earth-tones like verdigris, ochre, charcoal, pewter, Payne’s grey and raw umber as well as about a million different shades of deep green, and gem-like crimsons. Most of December’s colors fill the background at other times of year – barely visible for being easily overlooked, but they are the foreground now. And that inside-out color shift seems to turn all of the other colors on the wheel into precious pigments of our imagination.

I can mentally picture the garden – my own especially – as I’d like it to be in all seasons, much more easily now than when it’s filled with summer and fall colors – but while I can still remember them; and before the garden is beautified by snow’s contrast or full of the distraction of spring’s hopes. And the ideas flow even more freely as I walk around Blithewold where I can plainly see the plants and colors that would make my own December garden more complete. And I have this hunch (call me crazy but I get to see these gardens every day so I know whereof I speak) that a garden that is sublime in December is bound to be beautiful the whole year round. I’ll save specific examples for a later post.

Are you looking at your garden right now? What do you see?