Bloom Day Vortex

It looked safe out there. A glance at the temperature and looking at the wind indicated extreme danger. There was even a dusting of frozen on the ground.

The vortex had arrived in the night. It was COLD out there.

There were repeated brief excursions that ended quickly in cold.

I kept adding layers for each new venture out.

Oh, it's Bloom Day. This could be a problem. I have a vortex to contend with. Not even the Witch Hazel would open on a day this COLD.

I do have an orchid that is getting ready to bloom again. This orchid has been very generous with the flowers. It blooms ten months out of the year. Just not today.

But look, Indy, we have flowers. I swore I was not going to be having house plants. That didn't work out so well. There is a flower for Bloom Day.

I added another layer mid-afternoon and went for a COLD walk. I am plotting design enhancements for the winter Under Garden so I have a plan for early spring planting before the Lush returns. I need a line of evergreen color on the right above the frozen, golden brown iris.

My first thought was rejected. I don't need more yellow. I'll think on it some more.

The red twig dogwoods I have planted are not happening. I'm thinking they don't like my elevation. After many seasons it is time to give it up and frame in the Great Lawn with more of the evergreen Doghobble, Leucothoe sp.

I have found the need and space for adding another texture and color of conifer on the slope below the cozy cabin. I will go shopping one early spring day and find it, whatever it may be. I might need a touch of columnar.

I continue to ad dabs of living paint on the earth that is my canvas. I can see a picture emerging from the abstract. I see the influence of millennia spoken from the earth itself. I didn't plot it out. I listened and did, merely the conduit. There is a story to tell.

An Executive Decision

Many years ago there was a bare hillside of dirt that needed covering. I started with grass seed. Real gardening was a long way off. Nature supplied its own seed. I just removed what I didn't like. Bit by bit plants were added. It was experimental in some respects just to find out what would survive.

Many years later, three one gallon pots of the cotoneaster 'Streib's Findling' have covered a sizeable piece of a slope that is basically too steep to garden on. I thought a ground cover was the best option. An evergreen ground cover for the barren time was even better.

The flat dark green in the center left is the cotoneaster. Just to the right, the collection of brown sticks is a patch of Flowering Raspberry, Rubus odoratus mixed with a few wild hydrangea. It has always bothered me. Not the plants themselves, but the shape, form and size of this mass in this particular spot in relation to what is happening around it. It is crowding my other plantings.

I have decided it is time for the raspberry to go and for the cotoneaster to take up this space. I'm sure I can find homes for some of the raspberry. The hydrangea is basically a weed. I have plenty of it.

During the time of vegetation, Joe Pye Weed comes up in the cotoneaster. That arrangement can also be expanded. I have a new chore for a nice winter day when the temperature is above my minimum operating level.

In the not to distant future, the evergreen Under Garden of winter interest will play a more significant role during the time of vegetation. The Tall Flower Meadow will become more refined as it dances through. As things mature, it will become the garden.

Then I will claim, this is what I intended all along. It will be the truth, sort of.

The real truth is I intended to play, keeping the big picture and future in mind. It helps knowing that this play is never absolute or set in concrete. I can always change my mind and rearrange things. I have my eye on a few other improvements to the overall design.

It is a sign to have reached this point in the life of the garden.

A New Paradigm

Then it was over.

I doubt we have made up for the drought induced rain deficit, the creeks still aren't up to full flow, but the weather sure has made a remarkable turn around. The world is now cold and wet. I am adjusting.

It has been so cold some days, I only managed a trip to the mailbox and back. More days like that are ahead for the end of the week. I am adjusting.

Cold is one thing. Wind is another. All the rain that has been falling of late is either preceded or followed by strong winds. Cold is doable when it is relatively calm. Cold becomes miserable in the wind. I have had to work a few days in that. I am reevaluating my layering system.

There was a dramatic turn in the weather and in the garden. Leaving the meadow standing for the winter is certainly a valid option. I do that in large sections of the wild cultivated gardens. Closer to home it gets cut down at the beginning of winter.

A whole new garden awaits. It is a different paradigm for the barren time.

It changes from an herbaceous meadow to an evergreen shrubbery. The mood is completely different. I am adjusting.

The Under Garden Becoming

I was not expecting snow. I wasn't sure that's what it was when I first noticed. The flakes were so thin and tiny it looked like translucent pint sized glitter. Maybe some frozen cloud bits got scraped off. Maybe it was exceptionally thin fog.

It was piling up though. That is to be expected at 15 degrees. I guess it was just a new version of snow. A little different for a first snow.

I had no plans to go anywhere anytime soon, not at 15 degrees. That is well below my minimum operating temperature.

I did go for a walk mid-afternoon when it approached the freezing point. Real cold is going to be the new normal. Best I go out and do a little acclimating. I lasted for half an hour.

The garden was in a different mood today.

Miss Collar followed. The evergreen variegated sedge planted in the very bottom of the garden did quite well for being buried rather deeply all summer.

I admit it. I am actually quite pleased with the progress of the Under Garden. Yes, it sure grows slow, but it is growing. It may hit maturity in perfect sync with my decrepitude.

The barren time exposes all.

Something's happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear.

I have been tripping out on the Under Garden the last two weeks since I chopped down the Tall Flower Meadow. It really is beginning to show up and turning into what I had imagined for it, a highly visible, low mounding tapestry of texture and color.

Something is right when the morning starts off with translucent glitter.

Real Cold

There came a point when I could not feel my fingers anymore and had to stop. The real cold wasn't even here yet. It is riding in on an Arctic wind as I type. My minimum operating temperature has been breached. There will be no outdoor activities tomorrow and possibly the next day.

I am however tired of looking at all the orange tape. I tagged my baby shrubberies before the tree butchers with the utility company returned. I called. There was no response. I will just have to untag them, call again and do it over. Better to be annoyed once than every day.

The real cold coming will be more than enough to freeze the ground. I am most happy that the evergreen Under Garden of winter interest got a nice long drink before that happened. Frozen ground, wind and dry is death for evergreens in the winter.

It has taken so long to get to this point. I sure don't want to have to start over.

Growing colored lines will take me through the barren time. Now is the time I can contemplate enhancing them with spring planting. I might need another line in the top right corner of this shot.

The most recent plantings have completed their first full year. They are alive. There has been a modest amount of growth. Under my high competition regimen that is the best I can hope for.

I wonder if I will get around to toting rocks this winter. My heiau needs to do a little growing too.

The cold is coming. Snow keeps flitting in and out of the diagnosis like a hummingbird in the Tall Flower Meadow that never lands. It will get here eventually.

Remembering Rain

And then the skies opened.

After three months with no significant rain followed by devastating forest fires, a switch has been flipped. There has been one storm after another for the last week. Best of all they have been slow, steady and penetrating. Torrential downpours have been absent. Today was the first rain in which I have seen the creeks begin to rise.

Real cold is in store for Friday and Saturday. Snow may or may not be involved, but it will be here soon no doubt.

Real cold usually puts and end to the Witch Hazel's bloom.

All this wet is much appreciated of course. Yet.... I have a number of gardens that I need to finish cleaning up before winter sets in. I got a late start again this year because our first real freeze was a month late again. At least it has been generally cooler than last year's freakish heat up until the day winter arrived.

I have all winter to chop down the wild cultivated gardens so I don't fret over that.

I remember when it only rained in the late afternoons or at night and it did not interfere with my work schedule. Gardy don't work in the cold rain. He's too delicate. I just hope I can get everything done before the snow arrives.

The 'aina now remembers rain. It inhales deeply.

Will It Snow?

The diagnosis kept changing between snow and no snow, one of those above 3500 feet possibilities. Rain was a given. That alone was cause for celebration. I planted a few bulbs in a client's garden yesterday and did not have to dig deep to find dry dirt. We have a big deficit to make up for.

There was time left over for a stroll on a cool grey afternoon before the rains began.

The garden still blooms the first week of December. Hamamelis virginiana, the native Witch Hazel, is the final end of the season. Winter is near.

Two out of three cats followed. It was good for them to get out and stretch their legs.

Post fall has its charms. The 'aina is exposed. The true place and scale of things is made apparent. The drying meadow turns every shade of amber.

There was no snow. Instead there has been steady rain, a perfectly dreary day. It is a warmup for winter confinement.

The wet has the nice effect of accentuating the colors of the Under Garden.

It is an experiment in abstract pointillism in the garden. There is no intention beyond rhythm.

The true point is to have a functioning garden in the barren time.

Over the winter the meadows will be mowed down. The bare bone structure of the evergreen Under Garden is all that will remain in the vast space of the wild cultivated gardens. That winter garden is still years away from a substantial impact. It is slow growing. I am just thrilled to see it is starting to show up.

The winter stature of the grasses are a big help in the meantime.

It was time to go have a look. The main Under Garden has been cleared of the Tall Flower Meadow. Rain was making nice color contrasts. I grabbed an umbrella and went out. This is the view from the scenic byway.

In another three years, the left side seen up close three pictures above will have grown to catch up with the right. A garden of bold, colorful, abstract pointillism with no point will try to make a point high on the low spot of a North Carolina mountain top.