Cardinal poised in the top of my Crapemyrtle.

Today, it’s cloudy and cold with little hope for sunshine.  The Christmas tree is nearly down and packed away, and the red dirt kids returned to school.  I took a hot tea break at my kitchen table and watched the birds having their morning snack.

My winter favorites are the acrobatic Cardinals.  All throughout the Christmas season, I kept seeing Cardinals on everything in sight.   On ornaments, sweaters, note cards, and china plates, the Cardinals, embroidered, painted and sequeined, gazed contentedly from various surfaces.

The real deal looks a bit watchful and perturbed.  Who can blame her?  It’s cold, and she’s trying to eat.

Lady Cardinal

Although I enjoyed seeing their copied forms, the real ones visiting the feeders on the back deck cheered my post-holiday heart.

A few facts courtesy of National Geographic’s website.

• Cardinals live an average of fifteen years.
• They are about the size of a teacup.  No wonder I love them.
• The males can be very territorial and aggressive.  Have windows?  A cardinal will soon be fighting with his reflection in the spring.  However, right now, in the midst of winter, they are co-mingling around the feeder.  I guess food makes everyone get along better.
• Both males and females sing.

If you’d like to hear some of the many Cardinals’ songs, just go to the National Geographic’s page on these wonderful birds, where they have recorded several.

Hanging out on the split rail fence.

It’s like a tiny taste of spring.

'Cl. Old Blush'

Like I wrote in Part I, May and June were all about the roses and the daylilies.  The garden behind my house is a very traditional English cottage style garden.  It departs from the English ideal with its fencing of split rail and chicken wire.  The chicken wire is at the base and is barely noticeable.  It helps to keep the hungry bunnies from eating everything green in early spring.  Due to breaks in the fence, I still get a bunny or two.  For some reason (knock on wood), the deer don’t like this garden.  They like everything else in the yard.  Perhaps, that is due to all of the super thorny roses like ‘New Dawn’ growing along the fence.  Maybe the arbors confuse them.

During May, I shared all my rosey secrets. I introduced you to the Austins, but told you that if I planted a new rose garden, I would probably not include anymore of them.   That was controversial.  A lot of you adore the Austins, but I maintain that they thrive in better weather than we have here.  Fair damsels and gentlemen, they want a climate not unlike their native England, and they don’t enjoy our high humidity and wilting heat overmuch.  Portland or Seattle would be a very good place to grow them I think.

As always, May brought wild weather to our state.  On May 8, the Diva, Bear and I went to T-Mobile to replace my cell phone.  A tornado came close, and we ended up with the entire staff huddled in a hallway.

'Applejack' blooms only in the spring, but it scents the entire front yard when it does.

My hoes took over my blog to complain about working conditions in “It’s Hard out Here for a Hoe.”

In April, the most popular post I’ve ever written debuted.  Who knew so many people wanted to grow a Japanese maple in the great state of Oklahoma?   I only wrote it because I’d bought a new ‘Tamukeyama’ tree, and I was in the process of planting it.  At last count, this post has been viewed 1.175 times.  I’ve used it on Examiner.com too.

I can’t leave April behind without discussing the fabulous Spring Fling, where one of my favorite places was the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.  Oh, what fun we had.  It was a scary thing going all the way down to Austin to visit with folks I only knew through their words and pictures.  Kudos go to Pam from Digging, MSS from Zanthan Gardens and Diana from Sharing Nature’s Garden and all the others who helped them throw a wonderful party.  It was great to see their gardens and realize we grow many of the same plants, only mine are always a month behind theirs.  Thanks again, ladies, for such a good time.

At the end of March, my world was purple from Redbud trees and gray from cloudy skies.  The exciting spring weather season had started in earnest, and we had tornadoes nearby.  I wrote about Bear’s birthday and how much had changed in nine years.  Perhaps, I will have a little gardener follow in my footsteps.

I bought and planted more roses in March, and I wrote about how to prune the others in my garden.  I also attended gardening school.  That was fun, and I learned a lot about trees.

A corner of the garden in late spring. The rose bush on the right will double its size by autumn.

At a request from Dave at the Home Garden, in February, I wrote about my gardening niche, and I had to think about that one.  HH and I left the red dirt kids at home and went to New York City.  I bet you can guess what was my favorite part.  There were signs of life in the garden in February, and it made me glad.  The good folks at Gardening Gone Wild, through their Garden Bloggers’ Design Workshop, challenged us to write on color, and I reflected on color as navigator in the garden.  I want to thank them for making me think about gardening in new ways throughout this past year.

I also wrote another post about roses.  Do we see a theme emerging?

In January, at the urging of my dear friend and gardener, Mary Ann of Idaho Gardener, I wrote about the origins of my garden and how it has grown over the years.  We did a lot more work on the garden last year, and I think some of that was due to this blog.  Projects gave me more about which to write and dream.

I didn’t always write of gardening.  Sometimes, I wrote about food, like this entry about our dinner with Fr. Shane.  BTW, he is coming to my house in six days to make another fabulous meal.  I’ll try to take pictures.

Oh, and look, another post about roses of memory combining my two loves of roses and reading.

Many thanks.

Fences and arbors, with all their uses, were also discussed in January, as well as the garden at rest.

That’s it.  The year in review.  I want you all to know how much I’ve enjoyed this past year with all its gardening, cooking, travel, reading and writing.  Thank you from the bottom of my heart for reading this blog.  Your comments make me think, laugh and smile.

Pinecones seen at Iseli Nursery in Oregon

At the Entering of the New Year

by Thomas Hardy

I (Old Style)

Our songs went up and out the chimney,
And roused the home-gone husbandmen;
Our allemands, our heys, poussettings,
Our hands-across and back again,
Sent rhythmic throbbings through the casements
On to the white highway,
Where nighted farers paused and muttered,
“Keep it up well, do they!”
The contrabasso’s measured booming
Sped at each bar to the parish bounds,
To shepherds at their midnight lambings,
To stealthy poachers on their rounds;
And everybody caught full duly
The notes of our delight,
As Time unrobed the Youth of Promise
Hailed by our sanguine sight.

Water girl framed by two pines (Iseli Nursery)

II (New Style)

We stand in the dusk of a pine-tree limb,
As if to give ear to the muffled peal,
Brought or withheld at the breeze’s whim;
But our truest heed is to words that steal
From the mantled ghost that looms in the gray,
And seems, so far as our sense can see,
To feature bereaved Humanity,
As it sighs to the imminent year its say:—

“O stay without, O stay without,
Calm comely Youth, untasked, untired;
Though stars irradiate thee about
Thy entrance here is undesired.
Open the gate not, mystic one;
Must we avow what we would close confine?
With thee, good friend, we would have converse none,
Albeit the fault may not be thine.”

Happy New Year to all my friends.
For more reflections on this first day of the new year, please trip on over to Sweet Home and Garden Chicago, where Garden Bloggers’ Muse Day is sponsored by the lovely Carolyn Gail.