Plants Painted with Frost

A quick walk this morning to the bus stop took us longer than usual. We kept stopping to look at the beauty of the hibernating plants that were painted with beautiful frost. Discussion then continued whether the frost was painted on by Jack Frost (from the movie Rise of the Guardians) or Elsa, the Snow Queen (from the movie Frozen). Both talented and excellent winter figures, but my money is on Mother Nature...

Here are some of the beauties we found:

Thankful for Evergreens!

The temperatures have been downright frigid, the ground frozen solid and everything outside is in a deep hibernation. I know that the days are slowly getting longer and spring will come eventually. But for now, I am so thankful to have the deep green textures of my evergreens to admire out my window.

The needle-like leaves of the cryptomeria trees along the fence are a lovely contrast to the deep green and shiny leaves of the cherry laurels in the foreground.  

The bright morning sun shines on this mixture of evergreens. The variegated green-yellow liriope and deep green ilex provide a lovely frame for the red tipped leaves of nandina behind them. 

Snow falls on Cedars (and other trees)

Here on Long Island, we have received a lot of snow recently. Our last storm was particularly wet and so it really hung onto the branches like warm, white chocolate fudge over a mound of ice cream. Here are a few photos from that storm:

I still think the snow is so pretty to watch as it comes down from the sky and especially beautiful when it hugs the trees the next day. But, that being said, I wouldn't mind if spring came just a little early here...

Christmas at My House

Christmas is just a three days away. My children are beyond excited for the big day. The house is all decorated and although our live tree is getting rather dry and dropping needles, it still smells divine.

The tree is decorated with ornaments that hold many memories. I've collected many from places I've traveled, but my favorites are these whimsical angels I got at a little store in Heidelberg, Germany.

Each one is so unique and they all seem to have different personalities - the only commonality is a white feather. I just love them.

On my door, I have a pine cone wreath I made a few years ago. I wired each pine cone individually to the metal frame and then added embellishments. It's not the typical evergreen wreath you see everywhere, but I like it.

 This year I added a few birds, berries, greens and poinsettia flowers:

And finally, to the left of the door is another arrangement I created using white birch branches, berries and evergreen branches:

So there you have it! All set for Christmas. I feel like we have been decorating and planning for this day for weeks now and it's finally here. Merry Christmas everyone!

December's Hard Frost

Well, it's finally happened. The night temperatures over the past few days have been hovering between 15-20F and was just too much for my purple Ornamental Kale and orange Violas.

I must say, however, I was rather impressed with how long they lasted. They continued to look great all through November and even early December. But just around the time when I began to think the colors were wrong for Christmas, they simply wilted over and bowed down to the cold.

Since they were spent for the season, I decided to replace them with evergreen cuttings. I filled a similar flower box on my back patio too. And it just happened to snow on them the next day, making for a very pretty sight!

I can see this box from my kitchen window and sliding glass door. It adds a nice bit of greenery to my view in the bleakness of winter.

I filled another container with some of the longer and varied pieces of evergreens and placed it in the corner. I think it looks quite lovely here.

The soil has now frozen around these cuttings, so I hope they hold up for a while!