Ready to Freeze

 It's spider time on my Kentucky acre,

just ahead of the frost next week.

They're frantically spinning elaborate orbs before they freeze to death.

It's poetic and awfully artsy, don't you think?

I hurriedly inspect these for any scribbled symbol or message. 

The smarter spiders choose to make their last stand in the 

hydrangea bushes. It's an excellent place to freeze.

This year, I have only one blooming Heavenly Blue Morning Glory vine. 

Last year's vine was extravagant, a year of blues I'm sure will never happen again.

Because last year, against my husband's better judgment, 

I allowed the morning glory vines to take over a small dogwood. 

The tree wasn't so happy, but I could blame all the damage 

on the cicada invasion. And I did. 

The first blue bloom opened today, somewhat late in the season. 

But much better later- than never-blooming. 

There's something special about those heavenly blues. 

Even their gracefully-twining vines and 

miniature buds hold unique charm.

You're charmed, right? 

Lean In

More snow photos. 

You might be thinking, 

UGH. 

Yes, I know. I feel it too. 

In Kentucky, we're in a season of possible snow 

and overall gray gloom, 

with random dashes of spring. 

So while we're still in winter, 

let's intentionally lean into its wonder— 

Heaps of delicate snow-crystal creations. 

Feather-like frozen fluff. 

Frost-gilded leaves of yester-season.

Because soon and very soon, spring will arrive

 and winter will be over. 

“Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight,

At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more,

When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death,

And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.”

- C. S. Lewis

 

Bare Bushes

It's time to call it quits in the garden. 

Here on my one Kentucky acre, we've had drought conditions until just 

about two weeks ago. My container plants got just too shabby 

in the dry heat...so I fixed them. 

"Look at this," I said to my patient husband. "I fixed the container plants."

"You sure did," he agreed and took a few steps back.

Because, friends, I pulled them all up and threw their spindly stems

and crispy blooms in the firepit. What a relief! 

I plopped gourds and pumpkins in the empty containers—no watering needed. 

When we finally got a little rain, all the garden plants went back to work, 

creating new leaves and blooms. 

Look at this cypress vine, so cheerful in the summer-like heat.

Then this week on Monday, fall arrived. 

We've had a one-week color change with all the wonder of a true fall compressed 

into just a few days. Yesterday's wind and rain moved the color party to the ground.

Last night we swerved around another seasonal corner as temperatures dropped below freezing. 

I had time to save these beautiful blues, and a few zinnias, 

from the first killing frost.

The bushes are bare, but my windowsills are filled with vases of color. 

Beautiful Blues and Flash Fiction

The Heavenly Blue Morning Glory is pulling out all the stops on our garden tepee, 

even if the sky is the bleakest of grays today. 

And in other news, 

Splickety Publishing Group featured my flash fiction piece titled, "Frowzy."

It's about a bad haircut—I wonder if you've ever had an experience quite like Doris's? 

Check it out here and let me know in the comment section if you can identify.

Natural Sparkle

When I was a kid, my grandmother let my brothers and I throw 

great, globby handfuls of icicles on her tree. 

We thought that's how you should put icicles on a Christmas tree. 

How patient she was to let us take part in such an imperfect way!

Later I learned other methods, including the meticulous strand-by-strand approach

 to decorating a tree with icicle tinsel.

And then, there's the frozen fog way to trim a branch with sparkling shine. 

This weekend, my whole backyard was decorated in frost crystals, 

every edge gleaming with natural glitz.

Such beautiful holiday decor, and it all melted away, leaving nothing to sweep up.

November Closings

The gardens are almost 'put to bed' for the season.  

The perennials are trimmed to the ground, and the annuals have been yanked.

We've added umpteen bags of compost and all that has to be done is a thick blanket of leaf mulch.

This seems like a bigger job every year, and for the first time, I'm thinking 

maybe I'm to old to keep this up with all of this.

The gardens were my distraction during the intense years of childrearing.

The boys wanted to be outside and were happy to follow me around, 

digging in the dirt, swatting leaves with sticks and occasionally tasting a worm.

Yes ... it happened.

* I am completely in love (gushgush) with these photos of the morning sun on fall leaves. All I had to do was juggle the dials a bit and set the camera on the patio. Press the button and check the result - each photo a great surprise. Photography is so much easier now than the film days when each shot mattered since it cost dollars to develop. 

But now my occupations are mostly indoors and no one is coaxing me outside 

to play. And so the gardens are not as well tended as in years past.

We actually took one out last week; moved the plants we wanted to keep 

and threw the rest on the reject pile.  It was a relief to see bare space where 

a garden had been - isn't that sad?! 

** Is it sick that I'm happy to know that all spiders have frozen?  This guy lived, rent free, in the Lily of the Valley patch for at least a month.  Pretty generous of me... I think I've earned some grim glee at their passing.

*** I was sitting outside looking up into this HUGE sweet gum tree with My Youngest. "Remember how we used to sit out here and read Lord of the Rings, Mom? Those were great days!"  The words of a teenaged son can be brutal or blessing, and they seem unaware of either effect. I'm savoring these as a special blessing.

Quitter

Some people do not know when to quit.

Just like this snapdragon that continues to bloom, even in these subfreezing temperatures.

I can peek around the corner from my bedroom window and watch its blossoms wave 

in the frigid breeze.

When is enough finally too much?

How much does a person have to endure before throwing up hands and walking away, and who gets to make the call? I'm not sure where the lines lay, but I see that Peter wondered the same thing.

I took some begonias into the greenhouse when we started to have frosts.

They should've been fine in there, even though it's not a completely enclosed shelter.

A week or so later, sadly, I found them completely grayed out - touched by the frosty air and dead.

In contrast to these spunky snapdragons which were left out in the open to deal with the 

full force of wintery weather, those fragile begonias gave up the ghost at the first signs of chill.

I want to endure in relationships like a snapdragon and NOT behave like a begonia.

Frost Warning

It's hard to believe that the gardening season is almost over.

Our temps are supposed to dip below freezing for three of the next four nights.

Whatever is growing out there will be dead and dying, all crisped with frost.

A part of me would like to do the happy dance about that.

We'll * work through the gardens once more and take out any stray weeds, mulch with

leaf shreds, cut off anything that needs it, and declare the gardens "Put To Bed" for 

the year. By the time the Christmas lights go up **, I do NOT want

to be thinking about the gardens at all and certainly not again until March.

OK, I'll start scouting for new life out there by February. Snowdrops!

And (gasp) Polar Pansies! I just put them in - will they return in the early spring??? 

 I had a massive and pretty daggone *** awesome morning glory

teepee out in the front garden this year. I plant one every year and almost every year, it collapses. 

To keep me humble, probably. Windstorms have done it in the past, so this year I had the legs

buried nice and deep, thinking I could combat the elements and win. I planted a Heavenly Blue vine 

on two legs and a Moonflower vine on the third for blooms in the day and at night too. 

In the spring, the vines always look like they're not going to climb. Like it's not going to

be a big teepee year. But then, around midsummer, WATCH OUT! 

If you're standing near the teepee, the vines will reach out and grab you. 

Then it's time to start twining the thin vine tips around the teepee top, topiary style, while waiting for blooms. 

Lots and lots of twining and tucking, keeping the vines from running along the ground and 

taking over everything. And sometimes you have to just go out there and snip them off with shears. ****

 This year, after months of twining, tucking and snipping, I gave up and let them take over the rose, 

the hibiscus and the hydrangeas. It was glorious.  And secretly, I hoped that would

make the whole structure a little sturdier, more anchored, when the fall weather finally set in.

 It wasn't a windstorm that got them this year, it was rain that weakened the ground around the legs and

caused the whole teepee to fall to the ground. It's still blooming out there, even lying on the ground, but it will be all finished tomorrow morning. 

* We = My Wonderful Husband and I, and any Son I can drag into helping.

Girlfriends start to look like garden workers around this time of year. At least to me, they do.

** If we have a warm Saturday in November then the lights will go up early. But

it has happened that they don't go up until a couple of weeks before Christmas. 

They must, must go up for it to be a complete celebration, though.

*** My Grandpa used to say this word. He also often used dagum. 

He would hate that I'm growing any daggone morning glories, since he considered

them to be a dagum weed!

**** Morning glory vines don't start really blooming until they're finished stretching out as far as possible. 

Once the searching vine tips find that they've reached their limit, the growing stops, mostly, and

then the beautiful blooming begins! Oh, I could certainly take a lesson from this plant! Sometimes it seems

like I spend most of my energy trying to run ahead, peek around corners, take on new challenges.

What sort of blooms would I produce if I could just rest in where I am and what I'm already doing? 

Something to ponder as I weed/mulch/prune ...

Good For Something

We have newer windows in our home.  

Not NEW, of course, because our family leans toward the vintage side of life. 

Including home furnishings. 

Listen, I like vintage, but it does stay on the chilly side around here.

This view is not from any of our present windows, but from one of the casement windows 

that was here when we moved in. Now these were truly vintage! 

They were old, thin and brittle - especially when it was freezing cold, like it is right now.

Sadly inadequate for keeping the cold out,

but perfect for creating the most lovely frost patterns!

Extra-Ordinary

 You know ... ?

OK, maybe you don't. 

I'll be you've already brought your over-wintering favorites into your cozy home and have saved them from a freezing death. Well, this week's below freezing temps caught me by surprise (it's a yearly surprise) and I found myself running out for a Rescue Attempt before eight a.m. In my treadmill garb, which includes pajama pants - don't ask - I rushed out there and got such a wonderful surprise!FROST

I ran back in to grab my camera and spent some time trying to capture a tiny bit of beauty for myself. 

The light on the frosted leaves - people! 

Truly Amazing.

Are you spending time marveling at the wonder of His ever-changing creation? 

His handiwork on display in the most ordinary and transient occurrences? 

Join me and drag your eyes away from the stuff  for just a few minutes and LOOK! 

Even His smallest and most incidental works are sufficient 

to put us in our place in the best and most relieving way.

So take a deep breath and go look!

Rose Frost

My knock-out roses are hard to stop. 

They just keep blooming and blooming and blooming...

But that last frost stopped them cold.

It was time for them to take a break.

Merry Christmas - enjoy the nap!

  (frost on the patio chimney)

Dish Partner

A little bit of last summer is still holding on!

I only buy red begonias with green leaves. The way the colors pop against each other makes them one of my favorite choices. And they practically grow into a bush over the course of the summer! This one sat out the 2010 growing season next to the dish birdfeeder in front of the house. Even birds need atmosphere, yes?

Right before the first frost, I broke it all off and brought it in brighten the winter months while I wash dishes. I know myself well enough to predict its certain death if it wasn't placed near a water source. Every now and then, especially during this especially white winter we've been having, I lean over to get a nose-ful of that greenish, warm loaminess.

My houseplants always die a long and lingering dry death! Terrible neglect. But I think this one might make it all the way to spring!

(Do I need to talk about all the water spatters on the window, which I didn't wipe before taking the picture? I didn't think so...)

Sun on Snow

I snapped some photos from my kitchen window this morning. Sunshine on snow and ice is magic, isn't it? These icicles dangle from the vent of our greenhouse. Nothing is growing in there, or the vent wouldn't be wide open. It's not time for growing yet...

Snow on the boxwoods, which are also lightly frosted. What a beautiful display, which will probably melt today.

The temperature should rise above freezing for the first time in weeks!

For more Wordful Wednesday photos, go to Angie's Seven Clown Circus or try Outdoor Wednesdays, for something new!

Frost Show

See what you miss when you have those boring, energy-efficient, air-tight, new windows? All this beauty in an unexpected place and under not so ideal circumstances!  These windows are in our 'sun room' on the side of our house. Someday we plan to have the windows replaced, but I will miss the frost shows.

My kids were fascinated by this when they were little, and we spent time in that chilly room examining patterns left by the frost. They don't look anymore, but I still do.

You can almost see words in the frost - would the Lord speak to me this way...? Sure hope not - that would trigger a total freak out on my part. But He did speak to Moses out of the burning bush and Diane Duyser saw the Virgin Mary in her toast...