Color in Winter

 

Red twig dogwood, Cornus sericea, also known as red-osier dogwood.

Red twig dogwood, Cornus sericea, also known as red-osier dogwood. Host plant to the gorgeous Spring azure butterfly. Who wouldn't want to catch a glimpse of shimmering blue darting through the garden?

Celastrina ladon, the spring azure or echo blue, is a butterfly of the family Lycaenidae.- Wikipedia

image courtesy of Wikimedia commons

 

Of course, after twenty years of growing red twig dogwood, I still haven't seen a single blue butterfly. Fingers crossed that this year we'll see a few!

Red twig dogwood with birch trees in tree tubes behind

So why bring this up today? Because this week has been really absurdly cold. When the high temperature only has a single digit, that's really cold. The apartment toilet froze, twice. As soon as the snow gets squeaky, and the sky turns bright blue and the night sky is like black glass, the temps are going to fall through the floor. Speaking of floor... there's nowhere near enough insulation in my kitchen. The whole kitchen and dining room was built out of an old attached woodshed. They laid a tree across the dirt, dropped a few (not enough) 2x across the top of the tree and then laid flooring over that. Crude, to say the least. Underinsulated implies that there was SOME... but there isn't any in the floor of this part of the house. Days like we've had this week make me painfully aware of the value of warmth.

When it gets cold, most folks hug the fireplace, tea or coffee in hand. I tend to want to go outside. Even when the air gives me an ice cream headache... I want to explore the stillness. Critters scurry from place to place as quick as can be. Hiding in the lee side of a snow drift or under the boughs of an evergreen to keep warm. 

Today I saw a small flock of songbirds hiding along the ground at the base of the red twig dogwoods. They flew off and into the trees when I came too close. Looking at the dogwoods, I realized that I still need to get in there and do some major pruning. This year I will probably coppice anything bigger than a finger's thickness.

 

 

Why bother pruning? Red twig dogwoods respond well to being pruned hard. They shoot up new wood, bright red in late winter! It is the best shot of color in the bleak early spring weeks. Before the bulbs poke their heads up... before the cardinals frequent the feeders... there's bright red stems and nowt else. 

Come summer, the whole clump (or hedge depending on your point of view) becomes an impenetrable wall of green. Songbirds fly in and out, knowing they can escape from the hawks and owls. Robins make nests in there, every year. One year we had a kingbird set up shop. We were chased away every time we got too close to the nest. 

But as fall gives way to the early waves of winter, the leaves put on one last show. Long after the maples have dropped all their leaves, the red twig leaves swing from green into purple and red! From far off, it almost seems black. Closer inspection provides a rich, bright color and a reminder that come spring, that rich red will return.