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carol6ma_7ari

My thermometer reads zero

carol6ma_7ari
14 years ago

Probably this is the coldest day of the month - I hope - but I'm looking out the window at 15 frigid (but feeding) sparrows, 3 mourning doves, and a totally dead looking garden except for the broom, cytisus scoparius, which is happy and green. It's good to have at least one plant that is partly awake during January. What plants do you have that are green right now?

Carol

Comments (3)

  • prairiemoon2 z6b MA
    14 years ago

    Carol, it is about 8 degrees here this morning. I don't have a lot that is green out there in winter. Some moss between stones that is not all covered with snow, Hollies and some immature Pieris, a Honeysuckle vine, some Hellebore leaves that are a little ratty right now. My favorite right now, that I find very cheerful and perky are the Boxwoods. They have been freed from the ice and snow with the couple of warm days we had. They have pretty bronzing on their tips from the cold and they remind me of someone with a good haircut every time I look at them. All their folaige looks healthy and perky is the only word I keep coming back to. I am enjoying them. :-)

  • mad_gallica (z5 Eastern NY)
    14 years ago

    So far, we've had an impressively warm winter here. The min/max readings are comfortably above zero. We also have gotten very little snow. The snowblower has only been out once, and that was to deal with snow so wet, heavy, and warm that I was shocked the machine managed to deal with it.

    What is still green out there is mostly the usual suspects - yews, red cedars, white pines and boxwood. The tiny, miniature mountain laurel is also. We don't have the soil for rhododendrons, so my success with that little mountain laurel is seriously surprising. Then there is the bamboo which isn't sure whether or not it is green or brown, or whether or not it really intends to survive here.

    In the perennial gardens, the dianthus are billowing mounds of blue-green that look almost fake. The iris are green below what had been the snowline a month ago, and brown above it. One of the yellow epimediums - the one that is supposed to be evergreen - is green. Then there are the mounds of green carex and the mounds of blue fescue. The hellebores look like themselves.

    It has been too cold for the cats to go out, so they sit in the kitchen window and watch squirrels. Even they seem to understand that they get overstimulated watching the endless parade at the bird feeder.

  • terrene
    14 years ago

    It's been close to zero both mornings this weekend. If we don't have any subzero temps this winter, that's fine with me. Inspired by your question of what plants are green, I went outside to poke around. Aside from the usual evergreens, (Pines, Yews, Rhodies, Vinca, etc.) the following have some green foliage, more or less -

    Lunaria annua - Money plant - very hardy green clumps!
    Chives
    Deschampsia caespitosa - a native cool season grass
    Lobelia cardinalis - rosette of foliage is still green
    Myrica pennsylvanica - northern Bayberry has retained a little green foliage
    Heuchera
    Daylilies & Iris
    Lonicera japonica - Japanese Honeysuckle, which is very hardy but very invasive, and there's a big patch out back that will be dug out by a tractor this Spring

    Maybe some other things that are under the snow? Oh, and the pasture across the street, I like the way the clumps of grass look with the snow -