Snowy Morning

The last several weeks I have been focusing on long deferred maintenance.  With the volunteering then full-time chaplain residency position over the last three years, the limited amount of time that was available focused on the necessary tasks.  Things that were important to the life and well being of plants were done.  Many other tasks. such as cutting out and removing invasive plants and removing old, dead wood had to wait.

This last weekend was spent pruning back the overly ambitious holly between the house and the Bay, to open up views from the house.  Then cutting off two sumac trees hanging on the side of the ravine which would have ripped out a large amount of soil if they fell over.  My shoulders, arms and legs are still sore from that work.

Then this morning offered the delight of a couple of inches of soft, wet snow.  It is perfect for showing off the winter bones of the garden, the evergreens, the trunks and branches, and the remaining berries with patches of color. 

I am particularly excited that the Ilex verticillata 'Winter Red' still has its berries.  The last two years a deer has chewed off all of the berries early in the fall.  Curiously, the squirrels which have eaten almost all the berries in the large evergreen hollies back in November did not climb up into this holly to devour these, which are much larger and I think more delicious looking.  There is no accounting for taste in the wild creatures.

It is well above freezing, and the snow was mixed with rain, so I was surprised to see this single drop of ice hanging from the trunk of the Heronswood Globe Katsura in the middle of the labyrinth.  It hangs like a tear drop, waiting until it is warm enough to fall down onto the ground.

Then my final shot of the sun coming through the clouds behind the snow covered branches of the same Katsura tree.  As I write this just two hours later, the snow is gone and the branches are bare.  The moment was fleeting.