Friday morning brought the first of this year’s frosts. Only the grass was frosted. It didn’t cover the flowers and plants in tiny frozen crystals – so no photographs this time. (The photograph above was taken last November.) Little as it may be, the first frost marks a turning point in my garden year.
Soon the last of the flowers will be gone from the garden. The light frost was already enough to finish off the remaining flowers on my one red dahlia. Other flowers may continue for a little while but I could see that many had that translucent look that they get after being touched by frost. The cosmos probably won’t last long now, but the white gaura and geranium ‘Rozanne’ are still looking quite robust. Their flowers seem more able to cope with the earliest frosts.
Tender plants have already been rescued from the garden and tucked up somewhere sheltered for the winter. Inevitably, there are some plants in the garden that may not make it through if the winter is a hard one. This is always a slightly anxious time when I wonder how much of a gamble I can take with those, and try to find ways of protecting them from the cold.
It’s starting to get chilly and the leaves have mostly turned yellow and begun to drop to the ground. Even so, we do still get some bright and sunny days. When those days come along, I’m happy to get all warmly wrapped up so that I can spend a bit of time working in the garden. (There’s always plenty to do!) And I’ll be keeping a lookout for more frosty mornings, in the hope of finding good opportunities for photography.
Ann Mackay: Inspired by Nature 
It’s interesting to know that ‘Rozanne’ is not only beautiful but also robust in the face of increasing cold. The red leaves are gorgeous and.. Father Christmas colours haha! 😀
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LOL, the Christmas stuff is already in the shops and I wonder how soon the first decorations will go up… 🙂
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I haven’t been anywhere near a shop for ages except for our tiny town! Personally I’m not interested in seeing decorations until Dec but they seem to go up ever earlier!
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It’s been just food, DIY and plants as far as shopping is concerned for us – and like you, we’ve stayed in our own town for those. I agree on the decorations and our own are always put up at the last minute!
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Once again, the differences in our world came to mind. Here, geraniums are winter plants — sometimes even winter bedding plants, depending on where they can be sited. Certainly the cyclamen, pansies, and snapdragons will begin showing up in the garden centers soon. They thrive in the cooler temperatures that come with autumn — as do we!
I loved your frosted plants last year, and I’m looking forward to seeing what this season brings to you!
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Thank you – I’m delighted that you enjoyed last year’s frosty pics. We’ll see what winter brings…
We have the cyclamen at this time too, though some are not hardy enough to last in winter temperatures. And winter pansies are a favourite everywhere here for containers….so not always so different! 🙂
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Lovely picture, Ann! Lot to do in the garden before winter, isn’t it?
WE do not have such issues😊
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Thank you Indira! Lots to do in the garden but it’s ‘happy work’. 🙂
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The last two days out I have seen a lot of frost fringing almost everything in the two meadows I visited. This nice warm red highlighted by the chilling frost is quite pleasing, Ann.
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Thanks Steve! I was lucky that there were any leaves left on the little crab apple by the time the frost came. (They’re the only really red leaves that we get in the garden in autumn.) This year its leaves will probably all be gone before we get a hard frost.
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We haven’t had frost yet, it’s been too wet and windy. That frost edged red leaf really does look Christmassy.
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Temperatures have gone up a bit, so it doesn’t look as if we’ll get much more frost for the next couple of weeks. But things can change so quickly that you never know! If we had more reds left in the garden and a heavy frost, I could photograph them for a Christmas post. 🙂
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I expect it’s a bit much to expect for our special Christmas visitor to pop along early but he will be used to having a rosy nose with frost at midwinter.
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🙂
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Hi Ann! Love the red color! Do you ever cover you plants when it is getting really cold? That’s what I try to do when the temp gets below freezing here, but it does not always work. I know you get snow, so it might not be practical.
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Thanks Syd! Glad you like the colour – there will be a bit more red this week. 🙂 We do cover up some plants at times. Right now, Colin (hubby) has a group of container plants that had an old net curtain draped round them to keep frost off. And sometimes I put ‘frost-fleece’ round plants in the back garden. Other more tender plants go either into the conservatory or the greenhouse. Right now it’s mild again, thank goodness!
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“The cosmos probably won’t last long now” sounds like the end of the world is at hand.
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LOL, that does sound doom-laden! I’m so plant-focused that I didn’t even notice. 🙂
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