Tough little guys

I've been back home in Toronto for a few weeks, visiting my parents. It's been a great reminder of what real winters are like in Canada. Since I've been here, the weather has gone from a balmy 14°C to -20°C, to back up to 12°C and down again. There was no snow cover at all during the most bitter cold spell, just howling winds that pushed the cold into every little corner. I can't imagine being a tiny, defenceless plant during these times, with no barrier at all against the elements.

During the first warm spell, I inspected the garden and discovered that all sorts of plants had put out fresh growth, or broken out in tender bud. Mostly the usual suspects, such as snowdrops and hellebores, but still I cringed at the thought of what was to come for these little guys.  After the awful weather cycles and severe cold spells, I went back to have a look. To my amazement, most plants looked like nothing at all had happened – they were as fresh and green as the day they first emerged. Many just kept right on growing. Only a few showed the true strain of the weather, but I’m sure they will also recover come spring.

Here are a few before and after pictures, comparing plants before and after the severe unprotected cold cycles. The wonder of plants will never cease to amaze me.   

Snowdrops, looking completely unfazed before and after the severe weather.

 

The dark flowering hellebore came through the weather conditions not only completely unscathed, but with significant growth.

 

The light flowering hellebore, only a few feet away from the one above, did not fare so well. The new flower buds turned to mush.

Come and gone

Only a few weeks ago, I was anticipating the arrival of a harsh winter in Belgium based on the unlikely discovery of a few speckles of snow in early December. We didn’t have to wait long because only a few days after that post, it started snowing... to the tune of Belgian’s harshest winter since 1946. But almost as suddenly as it came, Belgian's big winter has vanished. We came back on Thursday from holidays in Canada to discover that the almost 2 feet of snow which we left behind has dissolved into puddles and muddy fields, and temperatures are now at a balmy 10C.

Winter may have been short, but it was beautiful. Here are a few pictures of the magical winter landscape not often seen in Belgium, taken on December 18th. The snow had that perfect quality which makes it stick to every surface. It’s amazing how much we can overlook when admiring nature and our gardens – only with snow highlighting every twig, can one fully appreciate the intricate branching structure of trees and the rich woody layers of the forest.




A snowy cover also means that we're irresistibly attracted to any colour not white or brown. Pictures of red berries in winter are so overdone, and yet it's hard not to take (and post) just one more.

Structure and colour - winter is a great reminder of these important elements of landscape.

Winter is coming

Winter in Belgium generally means gray, rainy days with temperatures rarely dipping below freezing. Snow and ice are rare, and cause complete chaos across the country when they do occur.

Well, this year, we’ve been warned: a real winter is coming to Belgium. We could already see the first signs of it this weekend at our local botanical garden in Leuven: tiny specs of snow were nestled between the fallen leaves, even though it was a sunny day. This little evidence may seem pathetic to any Canadian, but in a country where rain is the only usual form of precipitation, it’s an ominous sign.


The sun is so weak now, it’s no wonder it can’t even melt a few bits of snow. It’s dropping ever lower in the sky, and by 2:30pm there was barely enough light to take these pictures. The soft, low lighting did make for some nice effects though, especially in combination with the dried skeletons of once lush plants.


One of the advantages of borderline freezing temperatures and moist air which characterize winter weather here is hoarfrost. It's a beautiful effect, one that I often saw in gardening books while in Ontario and usually thought what a scam! Any garden can look good silhouetted in hoarfrost, but how often does it actually occur? In Ontario almost never, but here (and I suspect in the UK, where most of the books were from) it's a frequent visitor during the winter months. The pictures below are from last winter, but we've already enjoyed a few mornings of it this year. It's just a tiny patch of un-mown roadside on my way to work, but doesn't hoarfrost just make the most mundane thing beautiful?