This is round three of the paperwhites I’ve been forcing on my kitchen windowsill all winter. The bag of bulbs I bought last autumn was one of my best investments of the years, I think. I still have enough bulbs to get me through the rest of this winter and well into daffodil season.
And I’ll need them, too. Our recent snowfall (nothing major, but enough to close area schools and require shoveling out driveways and sidewalks) reminded me that there’s still a fair amount of winter left…
Via Neil Gaiman, I’ve just discovered the site of Yeondoo Jung, a photographer who takes drawings done by children and recreates them as photographs. Take a look at them—they are amazing.
It always seemed odd to me to celebrate the start of a new year when we are still locked in winter’s embrace. Yes, I know there’s that whole “now the days are getting longer” thing. But frankly, whether or not the days are getting longer doesn’t seem any more important to me than whether or not the days after getting colder. And on the first day of January, there’s still a lot of cold weather ahead. Brrrrr!
You know how you see something amazing and take a photo of it, then see that your photo doesn’t look anything like what you saw? (Sunsets are perhaps the most famous example of this sort of thing.)
Well, the other morning, I looked out my dining-room window while Sylvia and I were eating breakfast, and I saw that, seemingly overnight, the trees ringing my backyard had dropped many of their leaves. They’d been green through the unseasonably warm October and early November, and finally started turning a week or so ago. I sort of imagine that the trees, holding on to the last vestiges of summer, were relieved when the cold damp weather came at last, sighed as a huge responsibly was lifted from them, and let themselves start falling asleep for the winter.
When I saw the blanket of newly fallen golden leaves (with plenty of green ones still clinging up high, as you can see–but not for long…) I took a picture of it, thinking it would never look quite like the magical view from my window. But it does (even with a part of the window frame at the top). And I am pleased.
Last week we had summer-like temperatures, but now, as the air is cooling, it’s obvious that autumn is truly here. There are a few flowers left in my yard, such as these anemones, which were planted by my Dutch father-in-law, a horticulturalist who knows the Latin names (but not always the English ones) of pretty much every plant in my area (and in lots of other places, too). It’s an autumn-blooming perennial. When I see its stems start to rise from the ground in late summer, I wonder, “Will the flowers arrive before the winter?” And they do–and it’s a joy to see these delicate white blossoms that seem to float in the air.
And then there are the hydrangeas. We have one large plant near the patio and three smaller plants in other places; they all produce blue-green blossoms. I didn’t cut a whole lot of them this year, so the plants are covered with flowers that have been slowly drying out over the past few weeks–fading to pale green and eventually turning into brown paper.
The early days of autumn are always a surprise to me. The river birch along the back fence is one of the first trees to shed its leaves, and it does this even as most of the trees are still quite green. A handful of golden brown leaves scatter themselves across the lawn…and in the blink of an eye, it seems, the grass is obscured by a carpet of leaves (and it’s a thick carpet: last year we composted forty paper lawn bags of shredded leaves) and all the trees are bare.
Just last week, we were still in the middle of summer weather. Then suddenly, a few days shy of the official start of autumn, we’ve jumped into the warm-days-and-cool-nights mix that heralds the changing of the season.
Two nights ago, we pulled out the down comforter.
Yesterday was my first “long pants day” since last May (not counting the fleece pants I wore on chilly nights in Vermont last month).
Today the sun lit up the reddening leaves on one of the dogwood trees in my front yard. There’s green everywhere else–this tree is among the first to get its blossoms in the spring and among the first to lose its leaves in the fall–but autumn is definitely in the air.
It’s been a little over two weeks since we returned from our vacation in Vermont. Looking over the many (over 800) pictures I took, I find myself remembering all sorts of details from our trip. We had a great time in a beautiful place–I’d move there (or Oregon) in a heartbeat if we could manage it financially. For the time being, though, we’re staying in the Mid-Atlantic. And already making plans to go back to Vermont next August…
(Clover in the forest.)
Environmental education at Shelburne Farms.
Moss Glen Falls, near Stowe.
No rolling stones in sight.
Me in a canoe.
Wild raspberries, picked just moments earlier.
(There are more photos from this trip on my Flickr page, if you’re interested.)
The mid-spring flowers are all gone now, with just a few azalea blooms holding on. The dogwoods are fully leafed out, and the last of the lily-of-the-valley–a charming, fragrant flower that appears for only a week or so–said farewell a few days ago. Now we’re surrounded by rhododendrons, for which I have a soft spot after living in coastal Oregon, where the “rhodies” grow wild in the mountains and the arrival of spring with is celebrated with a rhododendron festival. The early-summer flowers are showing up, too: lilies, roses, dianthus. I love them all, but I’m especially fond of the blooms that bravely show up when there’s still a chill in the air, reminding us that, yes, spring is indeed just around the corner.
This is round three of the paperwhites I’ve been forcing on my kitchen windowsill all winter. The bag of bulbs I bought last autumn was one of my best investments of the years, I think. I still have enough bulbs to get me through the rest of this winter and well into daffodil season.
And I’ll need them, too. Our recent snowfall (nothing major, but enough to close area schools and require shoveling out driveways and sidewalks) reminded me that there’s still a fair amount of winter left…
