The Snow Retreats

My back yard on Feb. 4.

 

This past January has been the longest amount of time that we've had snow cover the ground since we've lived here--almost ten years! The two storms that left snow and ice in early January didn't melt much during this period of extremely cold weather. One morning it was minus six degrees! And it seems that the groundhog did see his shadow, so we still have another six weeks of winter to get through.

But yesterday's rain started to melt the icy blanket, and it continues to drizzle today. A good bit of the snow has melted, although the shady parts of our back yard are always the last to go.

 

The east garden

It's looking almost spring-like, though new shoots are still far from emerging. Even so, my native witch hazel on the west side of the house is starting to open its blossoms. What a welcome sight! My hybrid witch hazel 'Diane' is nowhere near to opening its lovely reddish flowers, it will take a few sunny warm days to entice those to open.

Witch hazel flowers.

Front yard.

Our front yard has been filled with birds since we put out the feeders: a cardinal pair, a male red-bellied woodpecker, a blue jay, several nuthatches and downy woodpeckers, and lots of chickadees, sparrows, juncos, and titmice. Not many finches around this year--a couple of house finches at most. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get any good shots of them--here's the best one from earlier in the week.

 

As the last bits of ice cling to the deck, it seems impossible that just a few days ago it was still covered with a treacherous layer of snow and ice. I look forward to seeing the first signs of spring soon. 

But first, I'm setting out for Florida with a friend in another week. I'm hoping to revisit some of my favorite places on the Nature Coast, then Big Cypress and the Everglades before we return on the 1st of March. Stay tuned for stories of our adventures.

Bits of ice cling to the deck.

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.

Christmas 2021

Christmas lights at our house.

 

The front walk.

Our Christmas decorations are a bit more subdued this year, but I like to think they look elegant. It doesn't appear that we will get any snow at this time of the year, but we may get some rain (which we desperately) need on Christmas Eve.

 

Our neighborhood at Christmas.

Herb on the porch.

And here's my sweetheart, greeting me at the door. May all your your Christmases be bright, even though here they won't be white!

In My Botanical Journal

Last week's pages: oat grass, dried hydrangea leaf and 'Nelly Stevens' holly.

 

This past October I started a new botanical journal after seeing two presentations on nature journals by artist Lara Call Gastinger. She did one presentation for our BASNCR chapter Zoom meeting and another at ASBA's annual conference. I'd tried doing nature journals on several occasions before, but somehow, after a few months, I'd get involved in other things; it became harder to find the time and interesting subjects for entries, and eventually I gave up on these altogether. 

 Lara's concept that one need not fill up every bit of space on a page, but come back to use the empty space in subsequent years, freed me to think of a nature journal in a different way. The idea is to establish calendar dates for each page, and simply do as much as one feels up to on those pages. With this in mind, I decided to attempt a nature journal again, and try to have fun with it instead of making it a chore.

So, every week I've been sketching a little of whatever plant material I find in my garden or during my walks or wanderings. At this time of the year much of what I find is dried leaves or seed pods, with the occasional evergreen, or plants from my indoor garden. Last week I drew a sprig of the 'Nelly Stevens' holly, a curled-up leaf from one of my hydrangeas, and oat grass, all from my garden.

 

Bearss lime flowers, Beautyberry (Callicarpa amaericana) and Christmas cactus (Schlumbergera sp.)

Generally I use pencil to do a very loose outline of the object first, then carefully draw it with more detail in ink before erasing the pencil guidelines underneath. The pencil scribbles help me to get the movement and proportions of the drawing more accurately. After the ink drawing is complete, watercolor pencils or a mixture of watercolor with watercolor pencils give it color. Notes about the plant with botanical name if possible, and occasionally notes on the pencil colors used finish up the entry.

On the previous week, I sketched blossoms of my Bearss lime tree wintering indoors, a tiny sprig of Beautyberry collected at Summerset (the site I visited for my painting of the historic property in Delaplane), and a flower from my Christmas cactus. The Christmas cactus produced four lovely flowers this year, and has a few more buds--last year the plant produced only two flowers.

 

Witch hazel flowers, Australian red finger lime, and Brassidium orchid flowers.

I try to draw the material life-size, and one of the challenges is how to arrange the sketches in the notebook pages attractively so that they flow across the pages. Using color to unify the two pages is one way to accomplish this, but the design still needs to be taken into account. Do I bring in a branch from the left or right side, coming from the top of the bottom of the page? To draw or not to draw across the fold? Each set of pages is different, that's where the fun comes in!

 

Fir tree sprig, cedar apple rust gall on Virginia juniper, Virginia pine cone.

I'll share more pages from my botanical journal in future posts throughout the coming year.

Summerset on Rose Hill

Summerset on Rose Hill, watercolor, 10"h x 14"w.

 

Recently I was contacted by a lady who had purchased my "Fabulous Franklinia" painting at Art at the Mill this fall. She had acquired a historic property about 20 minutes from where I live, is in the process of restoring it, and wanted me to document the house and buildings in a series of paintings before and after the restoration, as well as perhaps create a botanical journal to document the plants on the site.

The property records date back to the mid 1700's, although the house, Summerset on Rose Hill, was not built until later. The former owner, Mr. Norman Baker, purchased the property in 1961 and did a good deal of restoration in the 60-some years that he resided in it. He also wrote a book on the history of the entire area known as the Crooked Run Valley, which I'm in the process of reading. I'll post more about that and Summerset as I read on and learn more about it. And there will be more paintings of it, too.

My client made a date to meet at the property and show me around. We walked the site on a pleasant, sunny afternoon, and discussed which views she liked and thought merited paintings. We both took photos and agreed I'd start with a small watercolor of the ensemble of buildings as seen from a particular viewpoint she liked best.

I waited to find another afternoon when the weather was equally pleasant, and last Saturday the opportunity presented itself. I'd sketched the buildings and composition from my photo ahead of time, so I wouldn't lose time doing the preparatory pencil sketch on site. At this time of the year the window for getting the right light and shadows in the afternoon is about two hours, after that the sun begins to move away towards the tops of the hills, and the light fades.

With the aid of my photo, I was able to find the exact spot for this view when I walked up the driveway, and got started on the painting right away. I studied the shadows and marked them so that as they started to lengthen I would still have something as a guide. And of course, I took more photos. By about four o'clock, the sun was gone from the scene, and the chill of nightfall was starting to descend-- time to head home. The painting still had a ways to go to completion, but by then I had a very clear map to do so; with the aid of my photos, I finished the painting at home.

Buttonbush, VNPS 2022 Plant of the Year

Buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis), watercolor, 14"h x 10"w.

Here's my illustration of the Virginia Native Plant Society (VNPS) Plant of the Year for 2022--its common name is Buttonbush, the botanical name Cephalantus occidentalis. It's a shrub that can reach eight to ten feet in height and equal width, which loves wetlands. The "buttons" are actually clusters of tiny flowers arranged in a ball around. After the corollas and pistils fall, they leave behind seed pods which turn a reddish color and release their seeds in the fall. Many birds love to eat the seeds.

 It took many steps to achieve the final illustration you see above. I first sketched a flowering branch in my studio from material I collected in the field--it was much too hot to sketch outdoors for any length of time during the summer doldrums of July.

 

First pencil sketch, 10"h x 8"w

I waited until mid September to visit the plants again when they were setting seed--the seed pods turn a reddish brown color as they ripen, and I wanted to include this stage in my painting. At this time, the weather was a bit more conducive to outdoor sketching, so my next sketch was done on site on a very small sketchbook (my photo of it is awful, apologies).

 

Buttonbush seed pod sketch, 7"h x 5"w

Next I had to figure out how to combine the two sketches to create a composition that would show both stages. The problem was that the sketches were of different sizes--to save time I scanned both sketches, increasing the size of the seed pod sketch and decreasing somewhat the size of the sketch of the flowers and buds, until I had both drawings at similar size. Then I combined the sketches, making some corrections, and inked the drawing for tracing.

 

Ink drawing for tracing.

After tracing my drawing onto the watercolor paper, I was ready to start painting. I started with the flowers and buds, added a few leaves, then put some color on the seed pods and more leaves. As usual, I forgot to take more early and in-between photos of my progress, but here is what I managed to document.

 

Buttonbush - stage 1

Buttonbush - stage 2

Buttonbush - stage 3

I'm looking forward to seeing the brochure that will be published by VNPS with my illustration and our botanist's remarks.