Mid-Winter Magic
Mid-Winter's Day - the shortest gardening day of the year. To continue a Moosey tradition, I'm filling my Winter Solstice Report with the most colourful, magical garden images I can find to photograph. All guaranteed taken on this very day. Brr...
Shades of Red
Rose hips and crab-apples are the best winter examples of the colour red in my garden. I grow a lot of show-off rugosa roses, and providing winter colour is definitely part of their job description.
Winter Crab Apples
And those jolly, shiny red crab apples are adored by the birds. I spend a lot of chair time watching their antics when the weather's just too cold.
Hot Chocolate, Anyone?
And this year there's a strange reddish rose still flowering in the pale, low winter sun. I think it's called Hot Chocolate, which is a very nice idea on this rather chilly day. Yum!
Rose
Of course, all the beautiful red autumn leaves re long gone now. Lots have been raked and crammed into bags, others left on the gardens as mulch.
Yellows?
Yellow - well, well, well! I rescued an odd yellow daisy last spring from the supermarket, planted it, and immediately forgot about it. Not the most auspicious beginning, but guess who's still flowering? I think it's a perennial Helenium.
Paris Daisies?
The Paris daisies are also going pretty well. I guess my bright yellow plastic buckets don't really count, though at the moment they're filled with some colourful flax clumps...
Pinks
I grow lots of salmon pink-toned flax hybrids, with names like Jester, Pink Panther, and a family of 'Maoris' - Maidens, Chiefs, and so on. My very best winter-flowering shrubs, Viburnum tinus, are completely covered with dots of soft pink.
Pink Toned Flax
For a splash of bright pink I can still enjoy the English rose John Clare. I wonder if John Clare the man likes winter? He is, after all, a famous poet, and his rose certainly does...
Purples
At all times of the year I can find purple violas flowering. In mid-winter they're sparsely dotted through the garden, but they're there. Some folk call them 'Johnny Jump-Ups. They are welcome to jump up and self-seed in my garden.
Purple Hebe Flower
Then my eyes are drawn up from ground level to the head-high purple flowering Hebes. These are superb shrubs - five dollars from the local nursery, and blooming at such a severe time of the year.
Blues
Blue - Hmm... This could be tricky. Blue-toned foliage doesn't count, and we just won't even mention snow, which can look very blue in winter photographs. But I can find three cheery blue garden seats, painted in memory of a holiday in tropical Samoa.
Three Blue Chairs
And I know that soon in spring there'll be bluebells, and grape hyacinths. Yeay!
Whites
White and silver tones are rather cold to warrant a mention. Winter extras like hail and frost come to mind. Aargh! And we simply won't think about snow. But the usual white Iceberg rose is still bravely blooming. Brr... What a chilly name!
White Iceberg Rose
The colour grey is a winter special, but that's a matter for the sky and the cloud cover. No photographs allowed!
Greens
Obviously my garden is overflowing with every shade of green. Show me a paint chart, and I'll match every second tint with a winter leaf or a blade. I love the greens.
Green, Green, Green
I hope you enjoy the Mid-Winter's Day colours in my garden as much as I have.