winter

Winter in the garden

~ Eva the Gardener ~ Leave a comment

Winter is a time of the year of slowing down, contemplating the winter structure of the garden, remembering all of last season with its’ ups and downs. But if you think the garden is “dead” during winter time, it has just fooled you. Take some time to look closer, be still, watch the life there is. And be prepared with your camera/cell phone.

Structures. I usually let many of my withered plants stand in the autumn, not cutting them down for the winter. When frost and snow comes, I have wonderful structures breaking the monotony of the sleeping garden.

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Birds. Winder feeding of the garden birds is quite a joy. If you put some time on good feeding places, protection for the small birds and of course good bird food (I use organic seeds from a professional producer, http://www.slattergubben.se, I can reallly recommend him, also for his fantastic instructive videos) you will have spectacular bird watching all winter. Many different birds visit my feeding places, last week I even caught a Sparrow Hawk with my binoculars landing in our cherry tree close to the house.

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Mystical visits. Don´t forget to make a tour round the garden now and then, even in winter. You will soon be aware of small changes. Footprints in the snow … A bucket turned over … A hole in a garden bed. Often these mystical visits come by night. But if you are lucky, it is even possible to catch some of the biggest animals. Look at this photo, where a small family of mouses trotted right over our garden.

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Winterfun in the garden

~ Eva the Gardener ~ Leave a comment

When I was a small kid, I lived in the north of Sweden. Wintertime we kids used to compete between families on how to make the most beautiful snow lantern. Today I had a day off work, and the snow held just the right quality to make snowballs – so I decided to make a snow lantern, grown-up version.

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I used the summer bird bath that I had long ago stored away for the winter. This little round and shallow bath on a rack, will make the lantern come out of the snow, and sort of float in the air when darkness fall and the candle light inside is glowing…

So I started building a circle of tightly packed  snowballs. The weather was gloomy, grey, so some of  these photos nearly look like black-and-white ones.

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I started on the second row, on top of the first. To help them get “glued” on to the first row, I dipped the bottom of every snowball real quick in some water – that made them freeze to the snowballs beneath and beside.

The most beautiful structure is if you can build the second row a little to the left or right of the first snowball, it makes like a zig zag pattern from the outside when the lantern is lit.

When you continue building, see to that there is a slight tilt inwards, like an eskimo hut.

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Finally, after a long time of building, the lantern is ready. By the time I had come this far, the dusk had closed in, which made it a perfect timing to light the lantern.

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I used one of those memorial candles, because they are contructed to burn for 50 hours, and are not affected by wind and damp weather.

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A rather shaky photo (below), my camera is not a good one in complete darkness. But i think you can imagine the feeling. In the middle of the darkness, something is floating out, glimmering, glittering.

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