More from My Botanical Journal

Christmas week sketches.

 

Last Sunday's snow amounted to about four inches, but the sleet showers that followed left a hard crust of ice about half an inch thick or more in places--treacherous to try to walk in! With daytime highs in the 20's, this is not a good time of the year to go outside looking for specimens to sketch, so I've been focusing on dried plant material I'd collected earlier, and plants from my indoor garden.

 The Asian bittersweet vine above was collected at Summerset, the historic estate that I've been documenting in watercolor paintings. The miniature pomegranate was collected at Blandy Farm; the earlier warm spell around Christmas was ideal for walks, and adding to my collection of plant oddities. The rest are all dried specimens from my garden or from my indoor plants, some of which bloom at this time of the year.

 

Last week of the year and New Year's Day.

First week of the year.

I even drew a snow cap on the dried 'Autumn Joy' sedum flowers on this page (though I collected it before it snowed) to commemorate the first snow of the year, which I covered in this blog earlier--it's been the prettiest snowfall thus far.

 

Last week.

 

One of my dark-leaved winged begonias is blooming, and despite having grown this type of begonia for over twenty years, I don't recall ever drawing its flowers. The male flowers are in bud in this sketch, the female flowers, which will emerge later from the same cluster, are just tiny specks barely showing at this stage. One of my common witch hazel trees is starting to bloom, despite the bitter cold outside--I clipped a small branch to force indoors and sketched it. 

I try to place each individual sketch on a given set of pages in different positions, so that each spread presents a different design from the previous pages, yet "reads" as flowing from one to the next. I can't wait to record the first signs of spring, which is still so far away!

Winter Beauty

Plumes of Muhly grass in the sun.

 

We had another few inches of snow overnight four days after the first snow fall, and although not as pretty as the first, it has been cold enough to stay on the ground until the past few days. After the sun came out I went out to the garden to record its passage. Some plants really do look great when bowed and covered in snow!

The plumes of Muhly grass catching the light as they bend from under the snow are lovely, as are the dried stems of my 'Autumn Joy' Sedum peeking our from the waves of snow. My 'Color Guard' Yucca looks fabulous nestled in its snowy blanket.

Sedum 'Autum Joy' peeking out from under the snow.

Yucca 'Color Guard'

There is an austere beauty to winter with its subdued colors, and the weird snowy shapes could almost be abstract paintings. Nature's capacity to captivate and astonish is endless!

Hoary Mountain Mint.

The long bed in the back yard.

Japanese maple 'Bloodgood' with deer barriers.

Our neighborhood with the Blue Ridge Mountains in back.

The Garden in January

First snow of the year.

When I got up this morning it was snowing--the first snow of 2022! There appeared to be about three inches on the ground and still falling. I love this kind of wet snow that clings to every branch, sculpting every bush and object into marvelous shapes of incredible beauty! This is such a fleeting spectacle, I ran to get my phone to take some pictures before it all vanished.

 

From the front porch.

The plantings by the driveway.

I was still in pajamas, so I confined myself to taking photos from the windows and the front porch. After getting dressed, I went out on the deck to take more photos, but by this time the snow had tapered off and our street was being plowed.

 

The Seven Son Flower tree and Redbud tree in back.

The Kousa dogwood and the Badlands.

The nylon netting to protect my plants from the deer was drooping in curious shapes with its snowy drapery, and the clump of lilacs looked particularly lovely. The snowy covering makes the back yard beds stand out, making me realize how much everything I've planted has grown in the last few years. A few years before, there was very little there in the way of plants to be sculpted by the snow.

 

My lilacs in the snow.

Snowy back yard beds.

I still miss the big oak tree in back that came down last year; I'm sure the woodpeckers and other birds miss it too. Just yesterday when it was so unseasonably warm, quite a number of birds, including one red-bellied woodpecker, actually came to perch on the deck railing, as if to say, "Where did our former home go?" I'll have to put out some birdseed for them. Thus far they'd been enjoying the dogwood and viburnum berries, but all of those have been stripped.

I usually wait until late winter to prune back the previous year's growth of  herbaceous perennials but the warm spell during the Christmas season was so deceptive, I actually pruned back my cone flowers and some of the swamp sunflowers, so there is less vegetation on the ground to shelter woodland creatures, but still enough to help them out. It's hard to believe that just a few days ago my blueberry bush had some blossoms open!

 

The Zelkova.

The Little Indians.

I love the way snow transforms everything it touches in my garden Later on, I'll try to get out into the yard to get closer shots of the plants before it all blows away or melts. And the best part, it's not enough snow to have to shovel!

Cherry tree in front.

My potted blueberry 'Top Hat'

Hinoki cypress 'Filicoides' in east garden.