New Years in the Gardens

I love this picture. The trees look so ghostly.

I spent New Years Day in my favorite place: Rutgers Gardens. I was surprised at the amount of snow left over from last week’s blizzard despite the warm temperatures we have experienced since then.

The snow has been melting in interesting shapes.

Evidence of the high winds was scattered all over the floor of Helyar Woods.

Photo of the Day

I love the colors in this shot.

You can see more photos of my New Years Walk in the Gardens on Flickr.

I came, I Saw, I Bought

I skipped my annual tradition this year of buying something at the NJ flower show that had nothing to do with gardening. I did this for two reasons. First, because I was eager to get home and watch the Olympics, I had very little time to spend in the vendor area. More importantly, I had fallen in love with the African violet with the variegated foliage and I knew that there is always a vendor at the Philly show who sells African violets.

A and I were too exhausted after touring the Philly show to tour the entire vendor area, so we confined ourselves to seeking out that African violet vendor and A’s favorite seed source, Landreth Seeds.

I am deeply ignorant when it comes to African violets and so had no idea that there were several kinds with variegated foliage. A helped me choose one. When it grows up, it will have white flowers with yellow around the center. So much prettier than the plain purple one I saw at the NJ flower show.

Bronze Fennel

This is why I grow fennel

Signs of Life

If you look closely, you can see that the gardens are beginning to stir.

Lilac

Bronze Fennel

Cyclamen

Chrysanthemum

Columbine

My Garden in Winter

The frigid weather ended with a light snowfall. I hurried outside to take some pictures knowing that snow does not last long in New Jersey. All of what you are about to see was gone before the sun went down.

The sun became the Photo of the Day:


The sky was much brighter than it appears here but I like the gray moodiness of this shot.

I started out with the obligatory photos of snow-capped echinacea.





This is what drew me out of the house initially.


These hydrangeas are right outside my bedroom window.


This leaf was in the running for Photo of the Day. I find it strangely attractive.

Very soon, I moved on to foliage. Common Sage, my favorite of the foliage photos:


I love the colors in this shot:


Moody lavender to go with the moody sun:


Can you guess what this is?


Click here to see what it looked like in June.

This post was inspired by the Green Thumb Sunday Day post at A Journey of Grace & Whimsy. Thanks, Brenda!

Moments

I’ve been working on a Special Edition Master Gardener newsletter. Lots and lots of pictures. All of them submitted by fellow Master Gardeners. And frustratingly, all of them are landscape. I had one tiny space on the front page that was just screaming for a photo using portrait orientation. Perhaps I had some photos that would fill the bill? Alas, no, but while looking, I was reminded of a photo I took in September that just took my breath away.

EARTH Center vegetable gardenSeptember 21, 2008

This is exactly how it came out of my camera. No photoshopping. I just love the deep rich colors and the contrasting shapes.

Sometimes moments just happen.

December Color

I’m back after marathon nightshifts. Seven in eight days, 77 hours total, with only one day off. The normal maximum is four nights followed by three days off. But thanks to a combination of employee vacation days and car trouble, I worked longer and harder than I ever thought possible. By the end, I was so exhausted that I was hallucinating. Auditory hallucinations. I kept hearing music. Like a radio playing in another room and you can’t quite make out the words or the music to the song that is being played.

Of course, after wearing myself out like that, I developed a raging sinus infection. Which was bracketed by a wisdom tooth first breaking last week and then extracted on Monday. And yet, I still found the time and the energy to go to the gym twice a week, admittedly slightly less than my normal three times a week.

Today, I was finally able to get outside during daylight hours to see what was going on in the gardens. I was pleasantly surprised to find color still.

Antirrhinum majus ‘Black Prince’

This snapdragon is reputed to have been grown by Thomas Jefferson at his home, Monticello. It’s flowers are dark red. The foliage, dark green, during the summer has now turned a rusty red in my late fall garden.

I am developing an appreciation of the role that foliage plays in the garden, both its color and shape.

Plants For Shade

Hush! Don’t tell my boss, but while I spent six nights at work with no lights and no heat, I kept myself awake by writing about plants that grow in the shade. I published the results on Hub Pages.

First Outing

My trusty old digital camera died last May after years of giving me great photos despite the abuse it suffered from me. Of course it chose to do this a week before I was due to visit the New Jersey Botanical Gardens for the first time. I had always planned on replacing it with a digital SLR, but really hadn’t looked into them. In one week’s time, I managed to research brands, features and prices and purchased a Nikon D40.

And then it poured rain. With my old camera, this wouldn’t have been a problem. A little rain had never hurt it (although I’m sure it would have disagreed) and since it was a simple point & shoot, I could operate it with one hand while holding an umbrella. Not so my fancy new SLR. It requires at least two hands and dislikes moisture, heat, cold and dirt. What a prima donna!

The new camera had to wait until June before going on its first outing to NYBG. I put it through its paces. There were a lot of hits and misses, but by the end of the day, I had gotten the hang of this fancy digital SLR stuff.

This was one of those trips that yielded more than one Photo of Day. The first one was taken in the garden at Holly House before we even left.

Acanthus mollisBear's Britches

This is a new flower to me. I want it for my shade garden at home.

The second one isn’t even of the gardens.

Old Mill

This is an amazing shot. I took it out of the window of a tram that was stopped so that passengers could embark and disembark. Somehow I managed to keep the camera still despite the rocking of the tram as people got on and off while keeping all of them out of the photo. I did manage to get a little of the railing of bridge that we were stopped on, but that can be cropped out.

I had fun a lot fun that day. I took some “arty” shots like this:

I have no clue what flower that is, but it looks really cool.

I got some neat close-ups:

And I enjoyed using the lens to bring things closer like this duck:

Here’s another flower that is new to me:

Rudbeckia maximaGiant Coneflower

Walls and fences drew my attention that day. Here are two of my favorite shots:

You can see all of the photos of my trip to NYBG on Flickr.

Backgrounds

Salvia Black and Blue6/17/08
This is one of my favorite photos from this year. It easily qualifies as a “Photo of the Day”. I was trying to photograph the salvia while being mindful of the background. I chose an angle that would capture the form and color of the salvia blossoms that also included the foliage of the hosta growing at the base of the pot containing the salvia.

I love the contrast in colors and shapes. The dark blue against the bright green background. The linear flower stalk against the ovals of the leaves. In fact, I liked the result so much that I use it as the wallpaper on my PC.

Autumn Glory

This is what I see when I step out my door.



I’ve been allowing a tiny Japanese maple volunteer to grow at the end of my driveway. All through the spring and summer, it looks messy and weedy. Then, in the fall, the reason that I tolerate it becomes apparent.


I’ve been taking lots of pictures of the fall color in my neighborhood. Soon the cold winds and rains of November will arrive sweeping all of the leaves away. The glory that is autumn will be replaced by the dull earth tones of winter.