The Melt

 

Flood warnings are the order of the day here. We have a lot of snow. The drift is as high as my 6 ft. fence all along the nursery. We have been moving snow daily away from the house and out towards the garden and I am not sure we will get it all moved before it melts. Slowly it is melting. The afternoons are warmer now. Benedict is starting to come out from under his snow blanket and I can see more of the bench at the three sisters every day. There is going to be a week or so of wet snow that is cycling through freezing and thawing. It will be slippery but better than what is to come - the season of mud and molt.

Weeping in the Sideyard

We have a lot of caragana here. It forms long drifts of bush at several spots in our yard. Every evening walk in the fall is accompanied by the pop-pop-pop of its seed pods dropping. I have never been a fan.

The yellow flowers are... well... yellow. And not one of the nicer yellows that I can tolerate. But the weedy yellow of every wild thing that runs rampant in the fields. The music of the seed pods in fall does not make up for the mess they make everywhere! I usually grit my teeth through that and try to remember that the wildlife appreciates it and I appreciate the wildlife.

Then I met this weeping caragana and it turned my head. It sits in the sideyard, on the other side of the bridge from the bird sanctuary. In the summer it is a beautiful fall of green and yellow. Somehow the yellow seems happier in its branches. In winter it is a gangly nest of snow covered branches where no one lives. It makes me think of the Headless Horseman.

It always catches my eye when I pass close to it, in every season. It earns its place close to the house and, although I would never have planted it... I am glad it was here when I arrived.