Yesterday, the gates and fences bordering both my garden and the six and a half acres surrounding it stuck my fancy. The line "'Good fences make good neighbors'" from the poem, Mending Wall, by Robert Frost came to mind. Later, I reread the poem and saw new meaning in it. I think Frost was poking gentle fun at his neighbor and all of us. Now, I know that Frost was speaking of emotional fences , not literal ones, but after living in the country for nineteen years, I find I support the neighbor's point of view. Here, fences do make all of us, both human and animals, good neighbors. Although my barriers aren't herculean, they give everyone, including the wild dog packs which roam, boundaries. A word to the wise: if you tire of your dog, you are not doing your animal any favor by dropping it here. Before we...

Thunderstorms blew through last night. Heavy storms that reminded me more of spring than winter. I was going to write a post about the weather and why it is so changeable, but a better breakdown of Oklahoma climatology can be found here. Before we went to bed, we opened the French doors letting in cooler air. The high yesterday was seventy-nine degrees. This morning, after a night of sound effects, it was cold again with a low of twenty-eight. Crazy weather that shouts Oklahoma, and part of what makes me love living here. A good stationary front makes my the small hairs on my arms tingle with excitement. I get chills when I see lightning snake across the sky. That's why it was unusual for me to sleep the entire night through, but I did. It wasn't restful sleep. I dreamed a lot. I'm still tired. You see . ....

After I left a rather gloomy comment on his blog, my photographer friend, David, whom I met at the Garden Writers Symposium, gave me a challenge. He suggested I go out, armed with my camera, to find color in what I thought was a barren winter landscape. Two days ago, the weather was cold, so I kept my foraging to 30 minutes like he suggested. Here is what I found. The first photo is a burst of evergreen: Magnolia grandiflora's shiny emerald leaves. Can you see the tiny bud in the center? Call it hope of spring to come. As David pointed out, even gray has its subleties. See the detail of the lichen on the trunk of this oak; a play of light and dark. If you look closely, there is even a bit of gold in the lower left. Gray field fencing fronts a red tractor wheel. You...

What was I thinking? Every year I do this. Bulb overindulgence. They didn't look like so many in balmy September, but after a temperate fall, I was forced to plant them in winter, out in the cold. All 262 of them. On the packaging, planting bulbs looks hard. As a novice gardener, I was intimidated. All those diagrams showing the little spade digging a very deep hole. All that math complete with rulers that I guess you are supposed to stick in the hole. Have I told you all how much I hate math? I'm probably a writer simply because the journalism school at OU didn't require any math for a degree. Plus, I've got three kids, one of whom shares a birthday with my mother (today) almost one week after Christmas. If I took the time to plant per the instructions, I would never get them in the ground....