Garden in Winter

My garden in January is a bit ragged and sleepy. That's o.k., I need the rest. Just like the ground, I'm enjoying these sleepy winter days. These rainy, sleepy, winter days.   Yes, it's been raining here - it's great.  The perfect day to read about gardening.  Right now I'm enjoying Julie Moir Messervy's book Home Outside - Creating the Landscape You Love.  Garden Porn.  I'm really enjoying it, some of her ideas I hope to use in my landscape.

Proof I am human:  On a day when it is almost impossible to
 be out in the garden, that's all I can think about.

It is winter, but there is life in my garden, especially my container gardens.  At the front door I have Oxalis, "Purple Shamrock" it's blooming now, little white blooms. I've got a few pansies in the pot with it. The largest plant in this group is a Gardenia, evergreen and dormant now, in three or four months it will have the most fragrant white blooms. There is a bit of ivy tucked into one of the pots, the rest of the flowers are pansies. On Monday, I trimmed them back confident that in a couple of weeks I'll once again have pots full of blooms.

The Purple Shamrock is hidden in the blue & green pot on the stand,
 behind the light blue Pansy. The Gardenia is held up in the broken
tree limb that I trimmed and popped into the pot.

Purple Shamrock, Blue Pansies

At the back door it's a different world.  Morning sun and the shelter of the patio create a perfect little garden area.

I have one pot with Sage, Rosemary, & Thyme.

Two pots of lavender - that bloom whenever the mood strikes them. 

I was given some Aloe Vera last summer and still haven't found a place
to put it out in the garden.  It has doubled in size so I'm guessing
 it likes the pot on the patio next to the (usually) warm bricks.

I have a few pansies in pots on the patio and, somehow, in the pot with the seashell, two Thai/Asian Basils are still alive. 

That mass of twisted almost totally brown plant is called "Big Twister Rush"
(Acometidas Grandes De Twister) - that's right I bought it because I liked the name.
It's an ormamental grass, green in the summer, that will be cut back in February
when I trim the roses.

I've got lots of work to do in the garden.  Those two big empty pots are for the lettuces and cilantro I'm going to plant in the coming week, but it can wait.   There's a cold rain outside so today I'm just going to stay inside by the fire and read.


What's going on and growing in your part of the world? 

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