Sunday Drive

Yesterday was a really cold day, and Walt and I decided to take a drive out towards Aldie, Middleburg, and The Plains, taking back roads as much as we could and trying to find our way without the GPS. We kept crossing over this creek and of course I stopped the car every time to take a picture. We saw lots of horses and cows, lots of open fields, and of course my favorite stacked stone walls. We got out in Middleburg and walked around for awhile, stopping in a few shops and a cute little coffee shop for cappucinno. We also stopped in The Plains, one of my favorite little towns. There's not much there, just a few restaurants and a shop or two, but for some reason I really like that town, must be because they have one of the best little garden shops in Virginia, The Bittersweet Garden.

I could take pictures of these walls all day long, and especially the flower-like lichen. What a great color.

Why I Love Whole Foods

Thoughts of Spring

I walked around the garden yesterday and realized how lazy I was in the fall. While I cleaned up leaves, there is still a lot of last year's garden remaining. All my anemones are still there, the asters, and the sedums, and they all need to be cut back to the ground.  I did cut back all the daisies and purple coneflowers, peonies,  yarrow and baptisia,  and anything that was blackened by the frost or mildew. I don't think it really matters in the long run--some people just like to clean up the garden and make it nice and tidy before winter (that's usually me) and others like to leave the garden intact for the birds to enjoy and for some winter interest.  I kind of like leaving it--it was nice this winter to see the seed heads of the sedums and the movement of the other perennials.

My little herb and lavender corner looks pretty good. Will need to cut back the lavenders in early March.

I cut back most of my peonies, but missed this one, peony ring and all. That's a big no-no in the garden, because of peony botrytis, which I have had to deal with in the past.  Oh well, I'll have to spray with fungicide again this spring.

And here is my beautiful tree peony in winter. You can see how I have staked it and tied it up to make it stand taller and less sprawly. 

We had a lovely little snowfall last night, but the sun is out this morning and it definitely feels like spring isn't far away. The days are getting a little longer, 10 hours and 44 minutes today from sunrise to sunset, 2 minutes longer than yesterday (timeanddate.com). I know we could get some wintery weather, but my thoughts are definitely turning to spring. I have started looking through my garden journal again, and reading articles in the newspaper about seed starting. The daffodil shoots are coming up, I have seen some snowdrops,  you know my hellebores are blooming,  and my neighbor's crocus are starting to make an appearance. Now we'll get snow for sure!

Flowers

Flowers, by Linda Pastan

The deep strangeness
of flowers in winter—

the orange of clivia,
or this creamy white rose

in its stoneware
vase, while outside

another white
like petals drifting down.

Is it real?
a visitor asks,

meaning the odd magenta
orchid on our sill

unnatural
as makeup on a child.

It's freezing all around us—
salt cold on the lips,

the flinty blacks and grays
of January in any northern city,

and flowers
everywhere:

in the supermarket
by cans of juice,

filling the heated stalls
near the river—

secular lilies engorged
with scent,

notched tulips, crimson
and pink, ablaze

in the icy
corridors of winter.

The Light Between Oceans

This is the story of a young man, Tom Sherbourne,  who takes a post as a lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, a small isolated island off the western coast of Australia in the 1920s.  A WWI veteran, he has seen the horrors of war and the remote location and solitary work appeals to him,  and heals him. When he meets Isabel on the mainland before sailing for Janus Rock, he soon marries her and brings her  to the island, where they begin a happy and loving life together, isolated from the rest of the world.  Anxious to start their  family on the island,  Isabel becomes increasingly desperate after suffering multiple miscarriages. When a small boat drifts onto their rocky shore with a dead man and an alive infant in the boat, you can guess what happens. This is another novel about the decisions people make, and what they will do for those they love.

This book had been recommended to me by several people at the library, but as so often happens when people rave about a book, it didn't quite live up to the hype for me. I enjoyed it, but I didn't love it. It's kind of slow moving, and you know it's going to have a sad ending. But for me it was worth reading just for the descriptions of the island and of Tom's life as a lightkeeper. What an interesting and lovely life! Why don't we still have lightkeepers? I loved reading about how the light worked and Tom's meticulous record keeping of everything that happened on the island, and his careful work maintaining the light.  You really feel like you are there on the island and near the water,  and know the way around the paths and up the stairs to the light. Their isolated life on this remote little island appealed to me so much. But unfortunately another world existed outside of their island, and it's when that reality comes back into their life that their happiness is threatened, and the consequences of their decisions become known.

February Greens

It's no surprise to people who know me that green is my favorite color. I have been wanting to do a post for awhile about all the different greens in my garden,  but oh my goodness, I have about a million photos of green.  So maybe I'll do it month to month. Here are the greens of February, the dark dusky greens of spruce, hellebores, mahonia, boxwood, ferns, hollies, euphorbia, and the leathery leaves of rhodos.  More proof of all there is to see in the winter if you take the time to look.

And guess what, green is the Pantone Color of the Year for 2013.

Friday Fleurs: Orchid

Thank goodness for orchids in these gray days of winter. It's always a treat when one starts to bloom and the best part is they will stay in bloom for months. This one is a small grocery store specimen that someone brought me less than a year ago, and this is its second bloom. It's in a tiny little pot and it has several more buds on it as well as these first blooms. I usually keep my orchids in a sunny window upstairs to get the maximum light, and then when they start to bloom I move them around the house.

Unfortunately, this is the only white I'll be seeing today. I am so jealous as I watch the news and see the snow falling farther north. We just missed this East Coast blizzard and are only getting heavy rain today and maybe some flurries tonight.

Amaryllis Envy

As you  know I am pretty proud of my three-year- old amaryllis that is re- blooming right now. I take lots of pictures, close up, so it really does look pretty spectacular in the pictures. I was brought back to reality yesterday when talking to one of my colleagues at work. I was bragging about my amaryllis and she told me that she has  about 12 amaryllis plants, and most of them are blooming right now. One of her plants has three stalks with four or five blooms each! And some of her plants are three feet tall! Wow, talk about getting the wind knocked out of your sails.  She and her husband treat themselves to a new bulb every year from White Flower Farm (hmm, I like that idea) and some of their bulbs are now 10-12 years old. They keep them all in a bay window in their living room. Can you imagine a more spectacular sight on a winter day than 12 amaryllis blooming at the same time? I asked her to bring me a picture and if she does I will surely post.  I find I am coveting my neighbor's amaryllis...

I saw an amazing variety of amaryllis the other day called Green Dragon. I'm going to look for that one next fall. And I think I am going to start that "buy a new bulb a year" tradition.

'Green Dragon' amaryllis

Winter Gardens

"From December to March, there are for many of us three gardens: the garden outdoors, the garden of pots and bowls in the house, and the garden of the mind's eye."

~Katherine S. White, 1892-1977, garden writer, editor at The New Yorker, and wife of E.B. White

My winter garden indoors

My winter garden outdoors

The winter garden in my mind (image via Pinterest)

Meadowlark Walk: February

Yesterday was a cold and cloudy day and before we went to a Super Bowl party (yea Ravens!) we went for a winter walk at Meadowlark. It was snowing lightly (really, it was, even though you don't see any snow) while we tramped through the woods and around the lakes which made for a very pretty walk. We were practically the only people in the park, as we only saw three other people the whole time we were there. I am sure it is because I am taking pictures practically every day, but it's truly amazing to me how much there is to see in the winter. I'm sure some people think there is nothing to look at it in the winter, but the more I walk in the winter the more I appreciate all there is to see-- the structure of trees, the texture of bark,  the view of the sky through the trees, the wilted detritus of a flower bed,  and the occasional surprise of color in an evergreen or a lone early bulb blooming. And the quiet. Here in northern Virginia it's nice to find some quiet sometimes.

Witchhazel blooming

Walt thinks he is 18 again and can swing on a vine

Pretty tree structure

Pink hellebore!

Stinking hellebore

Now that's a tree

Frozen Cardoon

Icy cabbage

Love this copper tipped arborvitae

Happy frog

The Panther

Anti-terrorist agent John Corey and his wife, FBI agent Kate Mayfield,  are at it again, saving the world from terrorists. In this latest book,  The Panther, they are sent  to San’a, Yemen, on a mission to assassinate the mastermind behind the bombing of the USS Cole, an Al Qaeda operative nicknamed The Panther.  But of course John Corey knows better and soon begins to suspect the CIA might have ulterior motives for sending him and Kate into one of the most dangerous places in the Middle East.  In a previous book, Kate had killed a top CIA agent, and well, nobody likes smart-ass Corey, so they aren't particularly popular.  I like DeMille’s books, I think he is a master of the thriller, but I felt like this one was overwritten. He could have tightened up the story and saved about 200 pages. I’ve really liked the cynical and smartass character of John Corey in past books, but in this one his mouth is really over the top and he really got on my nerves.  You just want to say enough already, get on with the story.

As with so many authors who write multiple books with the same characters, the earlier books are better.