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It’s the time when we look back at the old year and forward to the new year. I hope that 2024 has been good to you and that 2025 will be a very happy and healthy year for you. May your New Year celebrations be fun and full of joy and the start of a year that fulfils your hopes and plans. Happy New Year!
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Wherever you are in the world, and whether Christmas is something you celebrate or not, I hope that this is a time of joy and peace for you. The ‘blogging world’ is a wide and varied one. It encompasses people who are very different from one another, but are brought together by common interests and a sense of camaraderie. I enjoy the relationships that have built up with both those who read my blogs, and those who write the blogs I read, and I wish you all great happiness at this festive time of year. Merry Christmas to you all!
(P.S. The rose is ‘Rhapsody in Blue’, which finished flowering long before now. One year, however, it managed to produce a few flowers late enough for them to get frosted – a photographic bonus for me!)🎄
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Most of the flowers in my garden disappear long before December. Unusually, the astrantia (top) managed to hold onto several flowers until well into one winter. Over a couple of very cold mornings it provided me with a delicate little subject for photography, and a good reason for getting very cold fingers and toes!
The scabious in the picture below was newly-planted just a few months ago and still had several buds at the time. I didn’t know if the last ones would open, but this one has. It was just in time to get caught by a heavy frost. The frost didn’t last long – you can see the droplets forming as it melts.
There’s always a chance that the last autumn flowers will get a touch of early frost. I was lucky, however, that these two plants were still in flower when the heavier frosts arrived. There’s often very little left to photograph by that time. The frost lasted well on these flowers because they’re both on the side of the garden that’s shaded from the morning sun. If they’d been over on the sunny side, the frost on them would have melted early, long before I’d have had time to get outside with my camera.
Luck can play a large part in my photography. There are many things that I have little control over and there are also the unexpected surprises that nature brings. I just have to keep my eyes open for them! ❄
A flower of Scabiosa caucasica ‘Fama White’ is covered in a frost that’s just starting to melt.
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Frost gives me good opportunities for garden photography in winter, but it’s generally not good news for the flowers in my pictures. The rose photographed last week was robust enough to survive, although it may not open any more fully. Most frozen blooms, however, are left with wilted and sagging petals when they thaw.
That’s not a worry, since the frost will usually just have finished off the last of the flowers from autumn. The plants will flower again next year – if they’re hardy. But there are some that are only borderline hardy and will only survive if the winter doesn’t get too cold for them.
The salvia above (Salvia involucrata ‘Bethellii’) may withstand temperatures down to about -5℃ and this plant managed to come through several winters. A far colder spell than we’ve had for a long time was too much for it, though, and it didn’t reappear the following spring. Some cuttings from the plant did survive that unusually cold period. They are in a huge pot that’s part of a collection of containers that my husband has planted up to go in front of the house. There it’s sheltered by the house wall. It benefits from a sunny, south-facing position and the warmth that radiates from both the wall and the paved driveway below it. This just shows how microclimates can vary within a garden!
The little daisy below was, I think, Rhodanthemum ‘Moondance’. (The leaves belong to the plant behind it.) It should have coped with winter. In this case it was probably the heavy winter rain that killed it rather than the cold. It’s a Mediterranean plant that likes good drainage. Here our summers are normally very dry, but, awkwardly, our winters can be rainy and wet. That means that I do sometimes lose plants if I haven’t given them good enough drainage. I think I’m lucky that so much does survive! 🌿
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Last week I was hoping for the frost and sunshine that the forecast promised, but with no luck. Instead a frosty morning arrived unexpectedly a couple of days ago. There was even some sun…ideal for photography!
The rose you see here is Zepherine Drouhin, a fragrant climber that has no thorns. (A thornless rose is a delight – no getting scratched when you’re weeding beside it.) It often has a few flowers left late in the year, so is a frequent subject in my frost pictures. Luckily, it is even in a helpful position – just where it is protected from the earliest sun by nearby trees, but where the sun can make it sparkle by the time I’m likely to be outside with my camera.
The rose’s position with regard to the sun makes a huge difference. One side of my garden catches the earliest sun. That means any frost there is very quick to melt and it is often gone before I can photograph it.
In contrast, the other side of the garden remains in deep shade for a long time. This side is where the flowers that get deeply frozen usually are, but there is much less light to play with. It occurs to me now, that I should bring a big reflector outside to see if I can reflect some sun onto subjects there. Why hadn’t I thought of that before? Hmm, in too much of a rush to get outside while there was still frost, I guess…❄
There’s not much left of this rose (‘Zepherine Drouhin’).
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This week the weather forecast promised us frost and sunshine – a great combination for photography. Unfortunately, our two very cold mornings didn’t give the conditions I had hoped for. The first morning had plenty of frost, but was exceedingly grey and dull until about the middle of the day, then the next day the ground was frozen but there wasn’t any visible frost on the plants.
The photographs here are from previous winters. The frost on honesty pods (below) is a subject that I’d like to pursue further. I’ve even prepared a few of the dried pods by picking some, peeling the outer skins from the seed pods, and then leaving them in a position where they’re likely to catch both frost and sun. Now I have to wait for the weather to play along!
Frost can make a lot out of very little!
While I keep a watch on the weather, I’ve been staying warm indoors and learning a bit more about printmaking. It’s been a long time since I did printmaking of any kind. I am now trying out methods that I can fairly easily do at home, rather than needing the facilities of a printmaking workshop. There’s a lot for me to learn and it may be a little while before I have results that I can show here, but it will keep me happily occupied while it’s cold outside. ❄
Frost sometimes manages to catch the last flowers of Rose ‘Zepherine Drouhin’.
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It’s amazing to see how much difference some sunshine makes to the garden in autumn. After days of smothering grey, we suddenly have an airiness and brightness that brings out the best in the leaves that are turning yellow and gold. For a while, the outdoors feels welcoming again, and thoughts of the approach of winter can be set aside.
There is still some warmth in the sun, enough to entice me outside to work in the garden. This year I have been making lots of changes to the planting here. New plants have gone in and others moved to places where they will grow better or look more at home with their neighbours. (If only moving plants was as easy as moving furniture!)
As they become dormant for winter, plants can be moved to more suitable sites. Theoretically, I have plenty of time to get it all done before early spring, but it would be good to get it finished before the weather gets really cold or wet. So these sunny days have been ideal. At the same time, the low sunlight is reminding me to think about the effects of sunlight streaming through foliage and to look for ways to take advantage of it. It is, after all, primarily a photographer’s garden!
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In gardening, it often feels as if there is a pause while you wait for something to happen. Waiting for the right time to sow seeds, to see buds open, or to pick your harvest of fruit or vegetables. This week I’m waiting (and hoping) for the grey sky to clear and let a little sunlight through to the autumn leaves. They need that gleam of light to pick out their details and bring their images alive when I photograph them.
I’m waiting for the first frost of the year too… 🍂
Autumn leaf of Elder (Sambucus ‘Black Lace’), photographed on a frosty morning a couple of years ago.
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By November there are few flowers left in the garden. The asters have almost all gone over now and many plants are beginning to die down for winter. Even so, there is a little colour left here and there. There are still the white ‘butterflies’ of the gaura flowers, which will continue to look good until a frost gets them. Also hanging on are some fuchsias, a couple of penstemons and the tiny daisies of Erigeron karvinskianus (Mexican fleabane).
Late October and November is the time when Hesperantha flowers here. The white one in these photographs is Hesperantha coccinea f. alba. It brings a beautiful freshness to the garden at a time when so much looks tired, and most foliage is turning yellow. (I have a red-flowered plant too, seen in this post.)
It brings great pleasure to see newly-opened flowers at this late stage of the year. Sometimes, however, there is disappointment if they don’t manage to flower before a frost arrives. Why the Hesperantha plants in my garden flower so late is a mystery to me. They’re said to flower from late summer, but it’s always well into autumn before we see any flowers here. Maybe the plants will flower earlier as they mature, or do they just prefer to flower in the cooler weather later on? In any case, I do love to have some flowers still around in November.
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My recent posts for this month and September have almost all featured blue or lavender-blue flowers. (No surprise there, since they are amongst my favourite colours.) So for this week, I thought I should try to find something different. That’s not so easy now. I have a little bit of pink and red around, and a some white, but there’s not a lot left in flower here at this stage of autumn.
This Rudbeckia ‘Goldsturm’ is just coming to the end of its flowers after providing a bright gleam of yellow for the last few weeks. I’m waiting for it to die down a little more to allow me to move it to an area where it will have a bit more moisture. It’s a plant that isn’t really happy in the dry conditions here, and can struggle when there’s little rain. If I don’t remember to water it in the summer, it can very quickly begin to look sorry for itself.
It will be moved to an area beside the little bog-garden, where it will be easy to remember to water it. (The bog-garden itself needs regular watering, otherwise it can dry out surprisingly quickly. Probably that’s because it is small and is now well-filled with Siberian irises, astilbes and ragged robin. It could do with being bigger, but we don’t have the space.)
I hope that the new position will allow the rudbeckia to bulk up and flower more prolifically. Nearby there is a vibrant purple aster and another, much shorter, rudbeckia. With a bit of luck, there should, in future, be a bigger patch of yellow flowers to bring some extra ‘sunshine’ to our autumn days.
Ann Mackay: Inspired by Nature 