In the November thread I posted some pictures of nice fluffy ornamental grass plumes (Miscanthus).

Well, it rained yesterday and last night, a little over 1 inch, and this morning the Miscanthus plumes were all matted together and bent over as seen from my kitchen window.

By this afternoon they were all dried out and fluffy again.

Some mornings I feel like that too, but I can usually rebound (coffee helps).

Claire

Those fluffy seed heads are really attractive, Claire, but when wet they look a bit sad.

We had a couple of mornings with interesting mist effects, but it isn’t supposed to get above freezing for the next 10 days, so I don’t expect to see that again until spring. The warmer weather meant that we lost most of our snow, but we have had quite a string of rainy or snowy days so water levels are amazingly high, both in ponds and lakes and in rivers and streams.

Yesterday the weather was warm enough so that the leaves of the rhododendron at the front of the house were nicely open, but this morning they were curled with cold.

It's 19 on my back porch this morning. :-)

It was 14 here this morning. Rhododendron this morning:

Rhododendron on Monday when it was well above freezing:

In the March 2018 Show Us Your Gardens thread I posted about the damage caused by a late winter nor'easter that dumped heavy wet snow on everything in southeast MA. A major casualty was pitch pines which were snapped off with limbs and trunks landing all over the place.

In my yard, large pieces of pine landed on an American holly and an osmanthus as well as other plants (pictures in the March thread linked above).

The holly was bent over 90 degrees with the trunk snapped but not completely severed. After a lot of work I cleared the pieces of pine off the holly but left a major piece of trunk in place to act as a scaffold. I had to cut about 4 to 5 feet off the top of the holly before I could raise it up and lash it to the pine piece, hoping the splint would recover and feed the remaining holly.

Many people offered encouragement and suggestions and I was asked to report back on the fate of the splinted holly.

I'm happy to report substantial recovery!

This is the other of two Ilex opaca 'Goldie' that I have in my yard. This one was a bit fuller than the damaged one and sustained minor damage with a few branches knocked off. Two pictures from today:

'Goldie' with minimal damage:

Berries on the above holly.

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And here is the splinted section from the severely damaged holly with new growth coming up from the bottom..

As expected, the holly sprouted from basal buds. There's some leaf miner damage but I'm not worried about that.

The holly also sprouted from below the top section that I had to lop off.

Some of the remaining branches on the trunk above the splint survived and have good healthy leaves.

And a few of these branches have berries!

This holly is a long way from regaining the beauty it had before the nor'easter damage, but it's made a good start.

The fallen pine pieces will remain in place for the foreseeable future and the other plants will just grow around them.

Oh, and I had removed the other pine branches from the osmanthus and it bloomed this fall.

Claire

edit note: I just checked the March thread and I realized I had referred to the holly as 'Goldy', but it should have been 'Goldie'.

Glad to see the holly recovering so well, Claire. It’s amazing how much of a difference having that full set of roots feeding growth makes over planting a new small plant!

I think that many of the little tweetie birds will enjoy the food and shelter provided by the downed pine.

Thanks, NHBabs. I do Project FeederWatch every winter and they ask in the site description how many brush piles do I have in the yard. I checked the 4 to 10 box. Lots of places for little critters and birds to lurk in and the squirrels enjoy running over the tops.

As my yard evolves I'm beginning to consider brush piles and bungee cords to be landscape features.

Claire

edit note: I didn't use bungee cords to tie up the holly - the ropes are some sort of braided synthetic, maybe nylon. I thought those would last longer than an elastic bungee.

Claire, that was a lot of damage, it's such a relief when you see mature shrubs making a come back, I'm sure. Goldie looks very full in that first photo and with plenty of berries on it. Do the birds eat all of them? What time of year do they?

PM2: The birds eventually eat all of the berries but they wait until late winter. I don't know if it takes prolonged cold to ripen the berries or if they just aren't particularly tasty so they're a last choice.

Claire

I love to see birds eat all the berries off shrubs and I've tried to add a lot of shrubs that have them. My gray dogwood with small white berries on it, can get stripped in a couple of days when they are ripe. The Aronia on the other hand, can still have some berries left on it by spring. I'm surprised too, because I thought Aronia berries can be made into jelly so I thought they shld hv a good taste to them. But the berries look large to me and I always think the smaller the berry the more the birds like it. I have the 'Brilliantissma' variety, so I wonder if it is the hybrid that is the issue. But they do eat them at the end of winter when there is very little left.

I have a couple of blue hollies that do produce some berries, but not to the extent your Goldie is producing. I think I probably have them in more shade than they like.

I think that what the birds consider palatable doesn’t necessarily agree with our tastes. At a previous house we had a relatively small crabapple tree that had fruit that was perhaps an inch in diameter that always sat untouched all winter. Then some time in March when there was still snow on the ground, we would get either a flock of cedar waxwings or several grouse (which typically are solitary, I think) which would come and gobble the fruit in a matter of hours. Both species of birds were fun to watch, with the grouse wobbling on branches too skinny to support them as they tried to grab fruit, and the cedar waxwings managing to swallow crabapples that looked almost as large as their heads.

Sunrise yesterday morning was a bit more pearly and less peachy to my eye that was captured by the camera. The wet area has started to reduce to a more typical level, but with more than an inch and a half of rain expected tomorrow, I don’t know if the maple trees there will be OK. They planted themselves, but it has been so wet for so long that I don’t know if it has exceeded their tolerance.

And a final photo of the tree just north of the house. The center is dead and has been dropping chunks, some as large as my leg, all season and it’s too close to the house for safety. We removed its buddy several years ago since the decay was further advanced, and DH turned it into some beautiful bowls and winter warmth, but the time has come to remove this one as well. I will be planting a new maple between the two stumps next season.

It's the last day of 2018 and this morning the sunrise was pretty. The first glimpse was at about 6:30 AM.

From my deck:

From my bedroom window:

About 20 minutes later from the deck:

and from my bedroom window:

The days are getting a little bit longer now, and the sunsets are getting a little bit later, but the sunrises are still stubbornly getting later too. Within the next week the sunrises should start getting earlier.

That will be in 2019 - Happy New Year to everyone!

Claire

Claire, gorgeous views you have there with the horizon over the water through the trees. I live in a suburb with flat terrain and small lots, so I can't really see anything but my neighbor's properties when I look out the window. I can't see the horizon at all, just whatever is reflected in the sky above it. I was walking into the LR this morning and saw the brightest coral/pink sunrise out the window. So I went out front to look - it was such a surprise at this time of year. It reminded me of what the sky looks like in the good weather when the next day is supposed to be really great. I took a couple of photos, but most of the photo is a tree and a roof. [g] . I thought how interesting it was that on the last day of the year, it was such a beautiful sky.

I love sunrise, not so much sunset, which seem sad to me, while sunrise is hopeful.

I forgot you could click on the photos to enlarge them - that third photo is really beautiful!

Happy New Year!