Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

May I please take this opportunity to allow my blog-readers and blog-friends a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. If you do not celebrate Christmas, then Happy Festivity, of whatever festivals you celebrate, to you. Here is a card of collage of some of the flowers that I grew in 2013.

Weather have been funny. For the last two days (from about December 21), temperature is rising up; yesterday (December 22), it was about 66 degree Fahrenheit (about nineteen degree centrigrade), an unheard of temperature in the middle of December in this part of New Jersey. Heaven has opened its flood-gate; rain pouring down in bucket-loads; a thick blanket of fog has descended.


The trees are bare but green has returned; lawns around the neighborhood are soft green. Seeing so much green, my spring-itch is back and my green-thumb is twisting. I spent about an hour, yesterday, in a garden-store, looking at the seed-racks, admiring all the green-house gadgets, and lusting for all the seed-starter pots and trays. The seed-catalogs have started coming. Just looking at them, my soul is getting uplifted and filled with joy and happiness.

However, such was not the scenery three days back. Snow was everywhere and not a speck of green to be seen. Here are some photos of snowy-days that I took on December 10.


The red-seeds of the Dogwood-tree. Well, I was mistaken -- there were green out there among the evergreen plants but were hidden from the sight by the snow.


Chilly but a beautiful sky. The sky sets on fire during sunrise and sunset.


A portion of the front garden completely covered in snow. However, the snow was not that much, measured by the thickness on patio furniture, compared to previous years. I hope more will come. Snow is very good as it not only helps in restoring the water-level of our underground reservoirs, but also helps in germinating many seeds, killing many bad/invasive seeds/insects, moisturizes the garden soil and loosens them up and also helps in speeding up the compost-process in the compost pile. That was once a bean-tree in the last picture. It has now some pea-plans; interesting that pea-plants do not die even in this freezing cold-temperature.

The trees are standing tall and proud even in the cold temperature. And, I am spending my days hunkered low in the warm house with a mug of hot chocolate, day-dreaming and enjoying my feather-friends. So many of them flock to the bird-feeders and devour the seeds fast. Their call grow loud whenever I get into the garden to fill the bird-feeders, as if they are shouting to each other, "hey, food is here." Some of them do not even have the patience (or shall I say courtesy) to wait for me to leave. They fly almost right into me to get the seeds. Too bad that I do not have any pictures because they do not mind me standing in their middle; but as soon as I bring out my SLR, they all fly away. I guess they do not like that big black camera or perhaps photo-shy.