Here is the link for the January 2012 thread

To see all of the 2012 threads, please click on the December 2012 link. The first post will have links to all previous months.

I am in process of moving all the 2011 threads over to the
photo gallery .

This pot had both the Dracena Spike and a bunch of impatiens. The impatiens dies out long ago, but the Dracena spike is nice and healthy.

Snow piled up on DD's toadstools.

We had a few days when the daytime temperature rose above freezing so I used the short melting window to chop the ice/frost off the pavers and to free some of the shrubs. It's colder now - the temperature went below 10 degrees last night (unusual for the coast here) and the snow creaks when you walk on it.

If you follow the path to the left, you come to the pieris patch.

The pieris are much happier now with most of the ice off, and with the ornamental grasses all squashed down another pieris is visible next to the euonymuses.

This P. 'Mountain Fire' should bloom this spring.

Claire

I have a few buckets of sand waiting just in case to put on the pavers and that should be fine.

I'm wondering though, about what will happen to the pea gravel path if I spread sand on top. I imagine the sand will settle in and fill the spaces in between the gravel, and the path will become more solid. I'm not sure if I want that or not and it would be hard to undo.

Does anyone have any experience with adding sand to a gravel path?

Claire

I'm not experienced enough to tell the difference between heath and heather, but this sturdy little plant has an interesting story.(link below)

Jane

It was stone dust vs. pea gravel that was used between pavers we had placed some 10 years ago. However, over the stone dust, sand was swept in for additional cushioning, if you will, and the only thing that developed was moss - even in the sunnier spots. My thinking is that whichever seeds the wind carries and remain planted in the residual sand on top the pea gravel, will be what you get - if anything. My experience with stone grit and stone dust is that on top of it, life still lives, but it took a number of years to develop.

Jane

This path squishes when I walk on it as the little stones move around. I think that sprinkling sand on ice on top of this path would result in the sand moving into the gravel when the ice melts. This sand would fill in the voids and eventually lock the gravel in place (if I kept on sanding ice). This might not be a bad thing - the path would become more like a loose concrete, almost like a concrete path with a lot of exposed aggregate.

Claire

I'm really enjoying my pieris this year - although it may be just guilt because I plan on taking them out in the spring! They are just huge and are planted in the front foundation right in front of the windows. I'm tired of hacking them back and it's terrible to do that to them when they want to grow. There are two different ones - one has redder bracts(?) and one is whiter, but they each seem very pronounced and colorful this year.

My red twig dogwoods look nice, as usual, against the snow, but need some serious pruning this year - lots of grey, dead stems/branches that I really need to get out there and clear away.

I will have to go out and check on my hellebores, after reading the other thread here.

I think I mentioned it elsewhere, but I have to say it again, because I still can't believe it - I saw forsythia in bloom the week of Christmas...

Dee

I snapped this photo of the grass peaking thru the melting snow yesterday. By today there is no snow left in this area.

However, I just glanced outside and did not expect my greenhouse to be the thing that shoots up in the warmth. Back in December I reported on the December thread that my greenhouse had been collapsed by the storms. This is one of those temporary greenhouses that you're supposed to be able to collapse and store away, but easier said than done.

Photo on December 30, 2012:

I just glanced out a window and saw the roof of the greenhouse again, so I went out to investigate. The greenhouse is healing itself!

January 14, 2013

It's not exactly straight up but it's open again:

The zippers on both doors were already failing and are now unusable so the greenhouse is more of a high tunnel:

This is what it looked like six years ago on December 20, 2007:

I've been looking forward to planting that space where the greenhouse sits but I don't know what I'm going to do now if this thing has that strong a will to live. It's going to take a whole lot of ropes to hold it down if I manage to collapse it again.

Claire

I'm waiting to see what happens in the next big snow/ice storm - maybe the greenhouse has been watching the rhododendrons curl up their leaves in the cold and the greenhouse will curl down and pop up again all winter. Something new to watch in the garden.

Actually, I never used the greenhouse for growing - I bought it for a temporary camp for my houseplants when I first moved up from NYC and didn't have room in a house for them. They lived out there for several months with a little heater and a long distance temperature sensor. Eventually I found space for them indoors and the greenhouse has been empty since then (except for a little yard clutter).

I toyed with the idea of setting it up on my deck for the winter to extend the season, but decided it would block the view too much and would be a disaster in a nor'easter.

Claire

The snow is officially gone from my yard - just in time for more to arrive tomorrow. I found these wonderful mushrooms growing on a stump down by the pond. I don't recall having so many mushrooms on this stump. I tried to look thru my older photos - and even though I take pictures weekly, this stump has never caught my interest as being photo worthy until this week!

I love the striping in this photo.

Those mushrooms are quite lovely. Maybe they waited until the bark was loosening up to give the mycelia space to grow?

Claire

The rhododendron leaves are tightly curled up and will remain so for a while. It always amazes me that they recover with no apparent damage when it warms up.

Claire (avoiding trying to start the car up)

TinyPic seems to be having problems today. I hope my pics come back.

Here's my January photo. Wish we had 10X the snow!

Claire

Here is my winter wonderland from last week. We looked at our house and made an offer on it in January. This view is one of the big reasons we bought this house.

Here's a close up of all the texture in the pond ice.

And after the snow melted, I could see that something was tunneling just below the ground. I have no idea what.

Classic vole damage . . . the bane of my existence!

I've noticed that my PJMs and Olga Mezzitt curl their leaves so tightly in this kind of cold that they almost look like needle bearing plants.

The photo is how the edge of the river bank behind the house looked after one of our light snows in the last couple of weeks. We've had several mornings that every branch was outlined in snow and the sun hitting the trees on the far bank in the early morning created a nice backlit effect. I think that Franeli has a lot more snow than we do - the corn stubble and grass is showing through in enough spots that I can't do skiing or snowshoing.

someone walked across our pond after mondays snow.

and i've found evidence of all the bittersweet i've yet to eradicate.

pixie_lou: When I saw your lovely photo of the texture on the ice I thought that you could almost skate on it. I can see why that was a selling point when you bought the property. But the later photo of the tracks on the pond reminded me of the problem of snow freezing onto the top of the ice.

Snow is melting away now, and some of the vegetation underneath is still green. This is Geranium 'Biokovo', one of my favorites.

And I don't remember vinca being in this location - maybe it's usually hidden by other plants that have died down.

It makes me feel good knowing that Spring is lurking underground.

Claire

Claire - I can't see the river itself without walking to the top of the bank since we are about 30 feet above river level, so I don't really consider it part of my garden. I rarely take photos since as you can see, the bank is pretty well treed and doesn't generally make for good photos near the house here. I live on the Merrimack River, which is perhaps 80 feet wide where we are, less than 10 miles downstream from where it forms in Franklin, NH. It's actually pretty flat both on the house level and on the river level, so no waterfalls, though there's a steep rise from our level up to I-93, so there may be a few waterfalls stashed away in the woods somewhere, but none I am aware of. The soil is sandy and without rocks, old glacial lake sediments, so in general not very good for waterfalls, though great for farms and gardens.

Here the background sound of the waves is mostly forgotten until it changes. I once lived in an apartment in NYC across the street from a church that rang the Angelus at 6AM, noon, and 6PM. I didn't hear it until one day they stopped the morning bell and I was wide awake - something is wrong!

Claire

Pixie, I love the photo of the fungus growing on your stumps. Such beautiful color patterns. For some reason I kept envisioning moths with the same coloring that would camoflague perfectly with the fungus on your stumps.

Franeli, that is a splendid landscape. You must live at a higher altitude than we do, as you had much deeper snow than we when that picture was taken.

Pixielou, it's not hard to see why you decided to buy your home based on the beautiful winter view of your pond.

And NHbabs, your last winterscape is really exceptional. The lighting and the hayrake in the foreground really make it!

I guess it's on to Feb winterscapes now, but I wanted to comment before this thread passed into obscurity. I always seem to have more time to browse than to comment!