Delayed Expectations and Pleasant Surprises

This past Saturday we finally got our first taste of overdue winter weather, however it was only a light appetizer and not a filling entree. The day was cold, miserable and rainy - not conducive to shopping or stringing lights through shrubbery, so we spent the day inside getting a little housework done and the Christmas tree decorated. During a break in the domesticity and the rain, I was able to spend a little time in the back yard. I was surprised to find that the Climbing Hydrangea foliage had taken on a pleasant yellow color, when in most years it simply falls off unnoticed. The leaf color is good match to the blooms of Winter Sun Mahonia.

Rain drop on Confederate Jasmine (Trachelospermum jasminoides)

Fatsia japonica blossom encircled by the Jasmine

The Climbing Hydrangea (Hydrangea anomala subsp. petiolaris)

Mahonia x 'Winter Sun'

When I woke the next morning and checked the thermometer, it said that we had finally kissed the 32 degree mark for the first time this season - about two to three weeks later than usual. There was little apparent sign in the garden of this brush with winter, but later when I got home from work I noticed that the exhausted Impatiens and the Coleus had definitively been hit. Monday morning frost had to be scraped from the windshield. I realize that many people out there have had far worse and though I am not happy about it, I expect that it should be time for winter.