Coming to Fruition

Ilex verticillata 'Winter Red' Oct 31 2011

When I first decided to divide my fall posts into flowers, foliage, and fruits, I chose to leave the fruits for last, figuring that I’d have several more weeks to capture the bounty of berries and seedheads. Unfortunately, the unusual cold and snow event at the end of October flattened much of the garden and meadow, bringing the 2011 gardening season to a screeching halt. That was disappointing, of course, but since then, a new twist to this topic has come to mind. I still have some autumn shots to share, but after them, I’ll reveal the new point of this post.

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Published in: on November 13, 2011 at 8:45 pm  Comments (50)  
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Leaves Alone

Fall color in the front garden at Hayefield: Acer palmatum, Imperata cylindrica 'Rubra', and Iris 'Gerald Darby' October 2011

For the past several years, Dave at The Home Garden has hosted The Fall Color Project, giving bloggers an opportunity to share links to their posts on peak fall colors in their area. This year, I didn’t even have to leave Hayefield to find lots of showy autumn leaves.

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Blood, Devastation, Death, War, and Horror

Blood Devastation Death War and Horror

“Hello, good evening and welcome to another edition of ‘Blood, Devastation, Death, War and Horror’, and later on we’ll be talking to a man who does gardening.” [Monty Python’s Flying Circus, episode 30]

Sadly, there are very few gardening references in Monty Python episodes and movies, but I treasure each one. The bits about shrubbery and recognizing different types of trees from quite a long way away come to mind fairly frequently, but I don’t often have the opportunity to use this one – until this week.

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Published in: on April 12, 2011 at 7:15 pm  Comments (12)  
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The Garden on Ice

Quercus dentata

Text and photos ©Nancy J. Ondra

We’ve just made it through our first serious snowfall of the winter here in southeastern Pennsylvania. In past seasons, I’d be out with my camera capturing snow-dusted stems and seedheads, but not this year, because I cut pretty much everything to the ground two months ago, in hopes of encouraging the voles to look for winter homes elsewhere. The strategy seems to have worked, but missing out on the winter beauty of the garden is a high price to pay. Fortunately, I have lots of photos from previous years, and I’ve been wanting to rework this old post for a while, so now I have a good excuse to sort through some of my favorite icy images.

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Published in: on December 27, 2010 at 1:30 pm  Comments (23)  
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In the Field

DSC_0066 In anticipation of the upcoming Earth Day (April 22, 2010), Jan over at Thanks for Today is asking her fellow garden bloggers to post about what they’re doing to contribute to a sustainable lifestyle, as part of her Garden Bloggers Sustainable Living Project. Her request gave me the incentive I needed to work on a post I’ve been thinking about for the last several weeks: the whole “joy of the meadow” thing.

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Published in: on April 10, 2010 at 9:53 pm  Comments (22)  
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