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Sunday, December 06, 2009

First Snow



First snow this year arrived yesterday, December 5. A heavy, wet snow flattened my perennial prairie. Some of the grasses will rise again, once the ice melts, but I think I like the openness of a flat garden. Time for a change.





The morning after ...



 

 

 

 

And now I can see the new stone wall at the end of the garden.




(photos 1, 2, 3, 9 by Phillip Saperia)

16 comments:

  1. Sigh, it's so lovely~~There is nothing like the first snow fall. The new stone wall looks wonderful with the red painted tree trunks (?) punctuating the white ground. gail

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  2. Wonderful, wonderful images! The second from the bottom is my favorite. We don't have snow yet. But it's getting colder...

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  3. James, your garden looks so serene in the snow...just beautiful, Brian

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  4. Beautiful. Snow transforms everything. What are the vase shaped shrubs in the 3rd picture? I love their form.

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  5. Makes me want to grab a good book, pull on a quilt, and sip some hot tea. Beautiful.

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  6. Gail, thanks for stopping by. Yes, that's a circle of red painted walnut logs from a tree that fell three years ago.

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  7. Tatyana, I added the evergreens (Thuya occidentalis, Arborvitae, which can deal with my wet conditions) this year, so there would be something that doesn't become hotizontal in a wet snow.

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  8. Linda, what a surprise to hear from you here. Were you at the Notchland Christmas party this weekend? It's the common burning bush (Euonymous alatus), grown for about 40 years. The builders of the house (1965) planted a huge bank of it against one end of the house and put this out from the entrance, then apparently didn't prune a thing. The ones you see are eight or nine feet tall. Winter is their glory season. Beautiful in ice or snow, especially with outside flood lights on them in the winter. Unfortunately, this is a highly invasive plant, dotted throughout the surrounding woods.

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  9. Susan, what kind of tea would you like? Congratulations on your new book.

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  10. James, I think you have me confused with a Linda Sostman? I unchecked my blogger profile, so you can now see my info when you click on LSostman -- I'm not Linda! (altho the Notchland Christmas party sounded nice....) Burning bush has seeded itself all over in Connecticut too, although mostly we battle barberry in the woods and multiflora rose everywhere here.

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  11. Makes me miss the snow! In Belgium, there were only two days of snow last year, and it's remembered as a hard winter. We do get hoar frost quite often though, and it creates some beautiful effects.

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  12. L Sostman, excuse the error. I obviously thought you were an L. Sostman I know who lives in Vermont.

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  13. Garden Wanderer, I'd choose hoar frost over snow. We don't get it a lot, and when we do I have a hard time getting outside before it melts. I didn't realize the climate in Belgium was so much milder than ours.

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  14. It is enchanting, James. Flattened or not, the snow is a magical decoration to the already lovely scene. The red logs are so eye catching! I remember the post about them. Snow sets them off, as well as the stone wall.
    Frances

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  15. Frances, thanks for noticing the red logs. I've planted some low sedges near them to help integrate them into their site. I was hoping they would work well with the new stone wall.

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