Garden Ghosts

This is being such a weird winter, and our garden has been wretchedly neglected. Ooo, "garden" - false cognate, sort of. In German, "garten" also means "yard". And I guess if you mow it once a week and weed and prune once a year, it's a yard. Anyway, last October while I was in Port Townsend with Mom, and el Husband was here on his own with the kids, of course the annual fall pruning didn't get done. Apparently, Annoying Neighbor asked Mrs. Next Door if she would bug Robert about the pruning, and Mrs. Next Door was all, "Um, I'm sure that when Anna gets back from burying her MOTHER, who just, you know, DIED, they will attend to the shrubberies which so annoy you."

But we didn't, because not long after that, FLOOMP! A winter's worth of snow descended on us and it hasn't really gone away, ever. So all these plants that we usually trim down to about six inches (except the traffic-hazard lilacs) are still huge and looming and ratty and oh-so attractive. Especially the ones with all the dead leaves still attached. Suburban Living Magazine, here we come!

And then yesterday and today have been clear-as-a-bell and sunny and blue and even warmish, in a wintery way. And then around dusk the fog rises, the temperature drops sharply and all that fog goes gnkkkkk- onto every surface. And the giant looming spindly ratty shrubberies are frost-limned and ghostly and almost-beautiful. Except for the ones with the dead leaves. They're still kind of yucky.