A Snowy St. Patrick's Day

Here's a few shots of green (green and purple oxalis) that I took at a garden center recently. Oxalis is such a pretty plant, but I've never had much luck with them, so I admire them at the nursery.  We had such a nice weekend, almost 70 degrees on Saturday. I walked around our yard and starting making lists in my mind of all the things to do. Walt actually pruned a few things yesterday, the smoke tree and the buddleia. It felt like spring!  And then look what we woke up to this morning. Spring is only three days away, but it sure doesn't feel like spring today.

A Few Signs of Spring...

Spring?

'O Wind, if Winter comes, can spring be far behind?' ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

A Shot of Color

I was in my favorite nursery the other day to pick up a few things, and was so happy to see all the colorful plants and pots and seed packets and garden tools.  Maybe it's just these gray, cold days of winter, but I am really ready for some color.

And how could I resist 'Bling Bling' zinnias? (I didn't.)

And these are some of the zinnia seeds I'll be planting this year. I'm kind of zinnia-obsessed.

Blueberries, Perhaps?

Blueberry 'Peach Sorbet'

One of the joys of a cold, snowy winter is looking through the garden catalogues that have arrived in the mail. I love looking at all the new varieties of flowers and shrubs and trees.  I like the idea of trying something new this year, and so I am thinking of growing a few containers of edible plants. I am kind of obsessed with this blueberry plant,  'BrazelBerries Peach Sorbet,' from White Flower Farm, which is a compact blueberry grown for southern climes (zones 5-10, I am in 6b) and can be grown as a small hedge or as a container plant. I especially like the foliage--apparently it starts out with a pinky-peach colored leaf in the spring which turn to dark green in the summer and then dark purple in the fall, and produces full sized fruit in the summer. I think it's worth a try. I loved having fresh picked blueberries when I visited my pal JoAnn in Vermont this summer, and would love to be able to have some of my own.  There's also a thornless raspberry, 'Raspberry Shortcake,' that is tempting me too...

Blueberry 'Peach Sorbet'

Blueberry 'Peach Sorbet'

Yummy Vermont blueberries

In This Season of Waiting

In This Season of Waiting, by Linda Pastan


Under certain conditions,
when the moon in the western sky
seems frozen there, for instance

even as the sun is rising in the east,
so that soon two sides of the coin
will be facing each other;

or when the snow
which is a stranger here
fills our trees with its cold flowers;

when the single
bluejay at the feeder
is so still

it could be enameled there,
then the earth becomes an emblem
for whatever we believe.

Sunday at Great Falls

Great Falls

Another snow day here today, and really, I just can't face getting all bundled up right now to go out and take pictures of yet another snowy garden. This is the winter that doesn't want to end, that's for sure. Everything is closed again, federal government, schools, libraries, yippee. Haven't seen any snowplows yet, so we won't be getting out for awhile. Yesterday, however, was pretty nice,  until later in the afternoon when a freezing rain began.  Walt and I went to Riverbend Park and walked along the Potomac River to Great Falls, about 1.5 miles each way.  There were lots of people (and dogs) out, people must have been getting in their exercise before the snow.

Potomac River

When we got to Great Falls, there was a bunch of kayakers on the Maryland side,  and we were entertained watching them all come down the Falls. Crazy.

Great Falls

Great Falls

Great Falls 

Sunny Morning

It's such a sunny morning, and my orchid looked so pretty with the sun streaming through, I couldn't resist picking up my camera.

21 Days Until Spring

Snowdrops, spring 2013

As I sit here on this cold morning with my cup of tea, for the second morning in a row it is snowing. Big, fluffy snowflakes.  But take heart, there's only 21 days until spring. Snowdrops, not snow, are coming. And crocuses, daffodils, tulips, forsythia...just think what is awaiting us under that snow.

Snow this morning

A Reason To Go To Paris

Musee du Quai Branly

I am fascinated by these vertical gardens in Paris that I have read about recently.  I think they are so gorgeous.  They were designed and planted by Patrick Blanc, a botanist and researcher, called the inventor of living walls.  He is best known for the living wall (le 'mur vegetal') he planted and designed on the Musee du Quai Branly in Paris, near the Eiffel Tower, and he has created living walls all over the world--London, Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Berlin, and many more.  He was inspired to create these vertical gardens by the plants that thrive on wet vertical rock surfaces without any soil, and he designed his own patented system to mimic this on the walls of urban buildings.

Musee du Quai Branly

His system consists of a metal frame that supports PVC plates,  on which are stapled two layers of a polyamide felt. These layers mimic cliff- growing mosses and support the roots of many plants, without any soil at all. A network of piping provides water and nutrients for the plants to grow.  The solution flows down the wall and excess water is collected in a gutter at the bottom of the wall,  which is recirculated into the network of pipes--a closed circuit.

Another installation (below) on a formerly drab corner in the 2nd arrondissement of Paris features 236 different kinds of plants, covering 2700 square feet of an 83-foot concrete wall. I love how it was planted in a wave pattern across the wall.

Rue d'Aboukir, Paris

The walls are planted with mosses, campanulas, geraniums, heucheras, ferns, ivies, sages, shrubs such as hydrangea, viburnums, and honeysuckles, grasses, and even small trees at the top, all  interspersed on a base of thick mosses and liverworts. He starts out with smaller plants at the bottom and moves up the wall using larger plants.

And another living wall is at the Pershing Hotel in Paris, formerly the building of the American Legion in Paris. Love this. There's even a pharmacy in Paris with a living wall of medicinal plants. All good reasons to visit Paris. Closer to home, there are Patrick Blanc-designed living walls in Miami, New York's Botanical Garden, and Charlotte, NC. Time for a road trip!

Pershing Hotel (all images via Pinterest)

Vintage Seed Stamps

Where have I been? I picked up these vintage seed packets stamps at the post office last week and I just might have to write a letter. What?

We Are Water

I am a big fan of Wally Lamb's first two novels (She's Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True)  and I wanted to like this book.  We Are Water is a very complex and multi-layered story about the break-up of a family. After moving to New York City to pursue her disturbing yet successful and very lucrative art work,  Annie Oh divorces her husband of 27 years and intends to marry her wealthy Manhattan art dealer (a woman).  The book takes place in the months before their upcoming marriage, and  explores the reactions of her ex- husband Orion and their three adult children. There are lots of back stories, of course, lots of secrets,  reasons why she married, why she falls in love with a woman. There is almost too much going on in the story. And I didn't feel the same connection with the characters that I did in his earlier books, they didn't seem as well developed or likable.  The ex-husband is a university psychologist, yet he misses all the signs of problems and dysfunction in his own family.  There are some disturbing scenes, too, that I thought were over the top. Over drama.  Each chapter is told from a different character's perspective, and the story goes back and forth from the past to the present.  It's a long book, a lot to take in. It's readable, but not in the same league as his earlier novels.

Winter Garden

"Most people, early in November, take last looks at their gardens, are then prepared to ignore them until the spring. I am quite sure that a garden doesn't like to be ignored like this. It doesn't like to be covered up in dust sheets, as though it were an old room which you had shut up during the winter. Especially since a garden knows how gay and delightful it can be, even in the dry frozen heart of the winter, if you only give it a chance."   ~ Beverley Nichols