Like most gardeners we entered January with no idea what the weather might bring us, but we knew we would be in for a few surprises. As with most recent garden surprises, this year almost from day one sent us surprises to do with weather! We keep getting named storms attacking us. However we did get a few blue sky days which were great for taking photos of tree silhouettes.
It is these photos that feature on my first page when I noted that, “On a blue sky day in early January the sun caught the skeletal forms of our deciduous trees emphasising their filigree structure.” beneath these words I shared nine photos of trees in our garden, willows, betulas, acers and an odd crab apple.
Malus ‘Adirondack’ Salix ‘Wendy’s Orange’ Betula ‘Hergest
Betula ‘Red Panda’ &’Kanzu’ Acer rufinerve Betula ‘Septentronalis’
Salix tortuosa. Betula ‘Hergest’
On the opposite page I wrote, “Winter flowering shrubs, mostly sweetly scented ,looked vital when caught in the rays of winter sunshine. Grasses and hellebores added more interest beneath and around them.” The page then featured ten photos to show colours in our January garden.
We had been surprised to see blue skies at the beginning of January but we were even more surprised to receive a covering of snow. We were surprised also when it kept snowing until we had six inches or more of the white stuff and it stayed a few days when we were blocked in.
I wrote, “Snow arrived with a vengeance and kept falling until the garden disappeared under a thick duvet of the white stuff which fell on top of ice. The snow was then covered by a deep frost which hardened it.”
Our borrowed landscape still and pristine white.
Staying on the subject of snow I next looked at the damage it caused in our garden. “The snow seemed so heavy that it broke many boughs of trees and shrubs and bent tall grasses over flat. A tidy up was called for because plants needed rescuing. Secateurs and various sizes of lopper were called into action. Most of our ferns in the ‘Shade Garden” were totally flattened to lay across the path alongside them.”
Flattened Calamagrostis Broken Cotoneaster
Snapped Mahonia
Pruning the damaged cotoneaster and finding more damage.
Another flattened grass. Ferns flattened onto the path.
Whatever the weather does there is always work to be done in the garden. some of these January jobs are featured on the next page of my journal. I noted that, “Luckily I love working outside in the garden in winter. I don’t worry about the cold or light rain. There is always a list of jobs to carry out in January.”
Jude the Undergardener pruning the blackberry.
Repairing a bird box. Ian, our gardener trims the amelanchier
Ian tidying damaged grasses. Ian trying to get an acer stump up.
Potting up carex divisions. Cleaning Crassulas.
On the opposite page is another of my 30 second sketches, this time of a Euphorbia coralloides for which I used Faber-Castell artist pens ‘Shades of Grey’.
Over the page I considered colour again but not colour in flowers or foliage but the delicate tints of fungi, lichen and mosses. I noted that, “There are plenty of fungi, lichen and mosses giving subtle colours often in hidden places, every shade of green from grass green to grey-green, plus orange, grey and blue.”
For the last page of my entries into my January Garden Journal for a change I thought I would share one of my paintings. This time I used my Japanese Brush Pens to create a single leaf of a Begonia ‘Pegasus’. I shall return to my Garden Journal in February.
greenbenchramblings 