Laughing Ravens

  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...

Bleak skies between winter snows    Frost coated garlic coming up in the raised beds. Something happens in the period between when the leaves blow from our yard into the neighbors and then on into the woods far beyond. When the sun squeaks through greasy skies and gives precious little warmth. It is a strange time. Not quite winter but it presages the inevitable. Most years we watch the weather systems zip around us, leaving us in a relatively snow-free bubble. It might seem that would be desirable, but one of the things I have learned about plants is that they need snow. Snow cover provides insulation (and warmth!) and also slowly releases moisture.  Without snow, what I have seen is that our plants desiccate. The winds roll off the plowed fields to the south of us, with nothing to stop the chilled air. Once it hits our property, it drops into the garden and that cold mass of air finds the lowest spots and hugs the ground. Until recently, I hadn't really seen how this ha...