a warm december

Prince Elwood basking in some winter light....It's been unusually warm which makes it hard for me to get into any sort of holiday spirit. It reminds me a little of when we lived in south Louisiana and little Sophie (quite exasperated with us) asked us "wheeeeeennnnn are we putting decorations up?!?!" - - - she was always one for a good party with proper decor and it was mid December, she was right.I collected some fallen branches and trimmed a few here and there on a recent walk (with the farm queen, Fred!) for making a wreath. Such a good use for my lovely Adirondack pack made by my dear mentor, Bliss McIntosh. She's an expert weaver and gardener and baker and likely many more things I don't know even know about yet, basically just a lovely human to look up to.December garden notes, who knew! My friend Liz gifted me some foxglove and it's still not frozen! I don't love the weird weather, but I do love that these babies had so much time to settle in. They are planted on the hill above the last messy spot in my rock garden project. I have a dream of the last rocky bits being tidied up with lots of fox glove, hollyhock, lupine and delphinium tucked into the rocks. I even found an ornamental verbascum (mullein) in lovely pastels. Give me all the spiky English Cottage style flowers, pretty please. In other news, the ducks ate SO MANY bulbs!! Ack!! They happily dug up each one, leaving a little hole where the bulb was once buried. Each dark spot in that photo above is a hole. Turns out planting naturalizing bulbs in your yard where your free range ducks also hang out is not great.Well, great for their bellies - not for my dreams of flowers. I'm pretty sure they ate most of the crocus and chionodoxa I planted. A very expensive snack, but I love those darn ducks. I checked on the field and luckily those bulbs were too big for snacking (tulip + daffodils). Oh well, lesson learned!xo,s