This has not been a very memorable December in my garden, but I can't let the monthly thread go by without some mention. As is usual in coastal southeast Massachusetts, there was only a whiff of snow for a few hours, and otherwise it's been bouncing back and forth between unusual cold and unusual warmth with episodes of rain.

The garden just sits and waits for something good to happen (like Spring?). The ornamental grasses are the most decorative but just when they get nice and fluffy the rain slicks them together. Now is when I really appreciate good old green shrubs.

Holiday decorations do help and I'll keep the lights on until Epiphany and the unlit decorations up until there are signs of Spring.

Anyway, this is what it looked like in my yard today.

Rhododendrons and grasses with a white pine branch. Ignore the white splotches; that's a little rhododendron on the left that suffered severely last winter so I covered it.

On the bay side of the house, this is my deck. I miss it every day. The trellis is a squirrel/chipmunk/raccoon ladder to keep them from climbing up the roses.

View from the deck at sundown. The sun goes down on the other side of the house so not much sunset action. Sunrises can be good, though.

If I walk out to the edge of the coastal bank I see the bay now that the leaves are down, although the branches and tree trunks still get in the way.

All is calm now - this is that somber time when Fall has pretty much gone but Winter hasn't come yet. It's nice, though, not to have the drama of big storms.

Claire

Forget to include the big old white pine down by the road which gets red bows each year. This pic was taken a few weeks ago but nothing much has changed.

Claire

I like your point-of-view, Claire, and your choice of words: the end of December is a "somber time" before the winter storms and freezes hit. You found some wonderful images in your yard. I liked contrast of the pale ornamental grasses against the evergreens and the grey of the house and also your view of the bay through the bare branches.

Your photos inspired me to get out today with my camera.

I first went down to the edge of our property. Here's the patio-by-the-river where we love to sit with wine, etc., in warmer weather and enjoy the river views.

As I walked around the yard, some things surprised me when I took the time to look carefully. Sedum 'angelina' spreads so much in our gardens that I consider it a summer pest. But today its light green and yellow tips stood out against all the greys and browns as it wound into the lavenders and between the flagstones.

Colorful exfoliating bark on our River Birch and Cinnamon Maple ...

Two other surprises ... ginger hidden underneath a fern and blossoms coming up from the leaves of a Hellebore.

Maybe this is 'Ivory Prince'?

Thanks, Molie. Your "patio-by-the-river" is a wonderful place and I'm picturing it with warm breezes and lots of birds and no need to wear fleece jackets; just bug spray (I'm actually getting nostalgic about the need to put on bug spray as I walk out the door).

It's great to see extravagant bark on trees now that they don't have leaves to flaunt - those are particularly nice examples.

And all the small green things are a joy - and flower buds yet!

Claire

I love your ocean side views, Claire, and your riverscape, Molie. Water is a wondrous thing!

The bark on your cinnamon maple and river birch are intriguing, Molie. We have planted some river birch seedlings but they are still little more than twigs. I never knew before that they develop bark like this, so now I'm especially looking forward to the day when they grow big enough to put on similar displays!

Your red bows really brighten up the landscape around your home, Claire. I'm thinking about some red ribbons on my tiny spruce trees next winter, until they grow big enough to support lights.

Here are a few photos of my landscape with its winter lights.

Red lights along one of our wooded paths.

Tibetan prayer flags on top of the hill, looking down on our barn and house.

Some ornaments on a forest tree.

and a panorama of the whole scene looking down from our wooded hill... (1000 bulbs dot com loves me!)

Seeing as January is drawing near, I have a thought, and would like some input. It seems that our group has become less prolific about posting winter pictures. I believe there are less of us than there were, or perhaps more of us in lurk mode these days during the "off" season. What would you all think if I made a "show us your gardens" thread for the combined months of Jan, Feb, and March?

I'll do whatever the majority wants, either a thread for just Jan 17 or a thread for Jan, Feb and March 2017. With special consideration to Claire's wishes (if you are still our moderator, Claire). I await opinions!

That would work NHBabs. Good point about our southern neighbors. Spring comes early to them! Your opinion carries much weight since you create a good number of these threads yourself. I'll wait for more input just in case a majority want to go on with the every individual winter month threads.

If you don't want to spring for a bigger harddrive for your computer, NHBabs, you can store your old photos on one or more thumbdrives. Better than deleting them!

I agree that combining months makes much more sense, rather than a thread for every individual winter month, Sped. I would suggest that you do what's easier for you. Jan/Feb/Mar or just Jan/Feb are both fine with me.

I like the lights and flags, spedigrees - it all helps to get us through the winter.

Deleting old photos really hurts, NHBabs, you never know when you may want them (at least that's what I tell myself). I keep a lot on an external drive.

What NHBabs and Molie said - Jan/Feb or Jan/Feb/Mar would be fine with me. Spring doesn't come very early here on the southeast coast; in fact you northern folks often see spring before I do!

I used to be the editor for the New England FAQ's, but that position seems to have disappeared in the Houzz regime. I can no longer edit an FAQ or post a new one. I did ask about it once but I was told it wasn't a priority at the time. Maybe I'll ask again.

Claire

I'm leaning towards a Jan/Feb thread but there are still a couple days left to this month so I'll wait until New Years eve to decide. It takes about two minutes to start a new thread, so either way it's no inconvenience.

OK I'm doin' it! I've got the thread ready for Jan/Feb 2017's 'Show Us Your Gardens' and will post it sometime close to midnight! Happy New Year to all my fellow New England gardeners, and may all that you plant grow strong and healthy in 2017!

(What the heck, if suddenly there is a mass proliferation of posts and the Jan/Feb combined thread becomes excessively huge, I can create a Jan/Feb Part 2, and next year revert to a single thread for each month as before.)

Ha! Good idea, Sped. Though I'm thinking that those of us along the southern NE coast really haven't had much winter this year, and that the weather forecasts originally called for a colder than normal winter. So I'm guessing we will get snows.

I usually love being out in the winter taking photographs. However, we get such terrible winds coming upriver, especially in the winter, that I take very few of them in our yard. Just making the run from the car to the back deck is a challenge. So I seldom go out with my camera. I know some folks take winter photos from indoors, but all of our windows have permanent screens on the inside, which makes it impossible for me to shoot through them.

I forget to say how much I enjoy the various photos of foliage, bark, and light displays that folks have created or found still adding color to the gardens! My garden doesn't have much color by now with just dark green, and various shades of gray, brown, and black with the exception of a few lights I strung on various trellises.

I managed to free up a bit of computer memory to download photos so here are a few taken this month:

The silvery buds of Magnolia Leonard Messel (helped a bit by some frost) stand out against the hemlocks in early morning light.

Because the warm fall and ample rain has kept the river open, we've had some lovely early morning effects. Here is frost on the trees between the river and the corn in mid-December, burned off soon after the sun hit the branches.

And a couple of mornings later, fog over snow.

Very striking scenes, NHBabs, with colors so different from the exuberant colors of a few months ago. There's a quietness about them that's very calming.

We got significant snow yesterday and last night, and I thought I should show how my house looks now to compare with the photo I posted at the beginning of this thread. The junipers and grasses are mostly squashed down by the snow.

This morning as the sun was rising the shadows marked the snow on the deck.

And the bay is always in motion.

As I was busily shoveling the paths I hit a roadblock - at least one rose in the alley was bent over by the snow and I couldn't get by without getting shredded and I couldn't get close enough to shake off all of the snow and push the rose back up. I'll wait until it warms up enough to melt the snow and, if I can't get the rose back in place (unlikely) I'll do some serious pruning.

We had somewhere between 12 and 17 inches of snow in the last 24 hours and it's turning cold now. I noticed the snow is creaking when I walk on it - which is unusual for here on the relatively warm coast where snow is more likely to squish than creak.

Claire

Great video, Claire. The Bay looks wonderful really in any season. It's been too cold for us to walk down by the water. Luckily you have a wonderful view from up there.

We also had snow ... only about 8 inches. I heard that the Cape area had more, but I didn't realize how much! Yes, it's cold here, too. Winter has arrived.