*Gardening with Mary

The Garden in Winter

Look outside your windows, with all this snow, and all the new snow that is forecast, and notice the garden as it stands barren and white.  Watch it carefully as the snow piles up.  Is there someplace you would like to have an architectural element, a statue, a new shrub to give the garden even more shape and form?  Look at it carefully, especially out the windows where you sit the most, at any time of the day.  Is there something great to see?  Try to envision a red holly shrub, with its bright red berries still attached.  Would you like to look at a swaying grass such as Miscanthus?  Make yourself a note; put it into your day planner, or your garden journal, so you can remember these thoughts early next spring.

Now, when the winds calm down, and you begin again to get cabin fever, go outside and look at the trunks at the ground level, and see if there are any rodent tracks or tunnels there.  If you find your tree trunk has had damage from rodents nibbling on it, then there still might be time to remove the snow from around the tree trunk, and cover the bottom of the trunk with a piece of plastic flexible pipe used for drains.  Simply cut a length, and stretch it around the damaged area.  Again, make a note to remove the pipe in mid spring.