Winter Twiggery

Here's a Burning Bush/"Winged" Euonymous alatus in winter, so you can see the flat corky "wings" on the branches, which apparently look divine holding new snow. Besides this aesthetic function, I have no idea why this bush evolved to have what I think look more like fins. Finned Euonymous.

Now's the time to keep an eye out for flower buds forming on early-spring-blooming shrubbery, and to whip out your pruners to snip a few branches to "force" indoors. Room temperature will fool their little buds into action and you'll get a spring advance. Most Forsythia, Prunus blireiana (the February-blooming plum with pink flowers before dark bronze leaves), and Chaenomeles (flowering quince), are generally of scrambly habit and won't miss a branch or five.

Below, I have a bundle of the flowering currant, Ribes sanguineum, on my desk because I was winter-pruning an overgrown schmozzle of shrubberies and had to give it a chop. I may be delusional, thinking I'll get a batch of those early carmine-pink blossoms, because this is a tad early. I can hope though. I'll know shortly.

In the meantime, I used a few Ribes switches to prop up my extremely reluctant Christmas Amaryllis bulb. At this rate, it will be a Valentines Amaryllis. I totally planned that :]

There is some colour out there and this Witchhazel cultivar, Hamamelis 'Jelena', down in the parking lot by the Beans at Park & Tilford, looks fluorescently spectacular in this photo, but people don't generally like it as well as the traditional yellow Witchhazel.

However, the yellow Witchazel (below) in the neighbouring P&T Gardens looks a soggy mess with its tenacious dead leaves so 'Jelena' is my pick of the day. I do appreciate the lacework branches of the hawthorne behind though. For all the grey of winter, 'tis the season of silhouettes and subtleties.

Here's a poem by Macrina Wiederkehr to remind us there's a season for everything....

The Sacrament of Waiting

Slowly

She celebrated the sacrament of letting go

First she surrendered her green

then the orange, yellow and red

Finally she let go of her brown

shedding her last leaf

she stood empty and silent, stripped bare.

leaning against the winter sky she began her vigil of trust.

Shedding her last leaf

she watches its journey to the ground

She stood in silence

wearing the colour of emptiness,

her branches wondering

How do you give shade with so much gone?

And then,

the sacrament of waiting began.

The sunrise and sunset watched with tenderness.

Clothing her with silhouettes,

they kept her hope alive.

They helped her understand that

her vulnerability

her dependence and need

her emptiness

her readiness to receive

were giving her a new kind of beauty.