Another windy, cool and rainy day in the neighborhood---while my Petoskey garden is getting slammed with a 'bomb cyclone'.  Urgh.  Our fantasy two weeks in Spain and Portugal which should have been chilly were warm to hot and sunny, day in and out.  So it goes. As I sort through photos of our trip, I keep finding these great flower shots that keep my gardener's heart beating faster. Here are another couple to motivate us all. Camillias were at home in Asia but hardened varieties bloom from Portugal (here the stunning gardens at Sintra) to Long Island.  Morning glories flower on this stunning chandelier in the Pena Palace in Sintra, Portugal. Whether in Mediterranean climes or the howling winter storm along Little Traverse Bay, bringing the garden indoors is one way of extending the growing season.

Winter is on the run in the Southwest. Friends are posting snowy shots of walks in the dunes at Petoskey State Park. Visions of spring in Portugal and Spain are still dancing in my head. The plants were familiar---from a vinca that is taking over the world in Northern Michigan to interesting succulents. Bougainvillea were not blooming as yet. But then a lot was. I am going to share a few.
From left: Golden Chalice vine growing on a pergola was absolutely spectacular;  at center, an interesting bulb-like flower (any ideas what it might be?). Now Bergenia I know---a crop of it blossoms in the Memorial Garden in Bay View every year.

No, I haven't been lazy...we've been abroad on a wonderful OAT trip to Spain and Portugal. Oddly, what could have been a cool and rainy two weeks turned out warm and sunny (Yes, I packed the wrong kind of clothes). Meanwhile back in AZ, it was colder, believe it or not.  The two countries were amazing places for gardeners to reflect and renew. Shared here is a tribute to the fusion of nature and modern architecture in the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia designed by Santiago Calatrava and Felix Candela. Who says steel and iron need to look cold and uninviting?

Snow and gloomy rains are falling in California. The Midwest is a sea of white.  Right now the summer garden seems light years away. Here is a favorite shot from an overnight on Mackinac Island last year to keep up our spirits. The colors were absolutely spectacular.

Valentine's Day has come and gone.  It is snowing like mad in the Upper Midwest. It is so damp in Arizona that the groundcover in my flower bed is starting to rot.  So,
here's a lovely early spring favorite to cheer everybody up. Bleeding Heart, turns out, loves lots of water. Unfortunately the Arizona heat, not so much. As with daffodils, until the Bleeding Heart's bluish foliage begins to turn brown, don't be tempted to cut it back.  The plant needs that foliage to keep storing food reserves for next season. In the Victorian plant lexicon, these spring beauties can mean everything from compassion to passionate love, but in the Eastern cultures where the plant originated, it means just the opposite---spurned or rejected love. The plant also can symbolize bonds stronger than death or too much sensitivity. A bit ambivalent, to say the least! So despite its heart-like blossoms, those mixed signals don't seem to make it a very safe gift to say "I love you".

It's worse than the story of Monarch butterflies. An article appearing across online media the last few days reports that 41 percent of ALL insect species are in decline, 31 percent are 'threatened' and that insect populations are declining 8 times faster than human or animal species. Summer insect populations declined 82 percent in the 27 years of the study conducted by Radboud University in the Netherlands. Bottom line: it could be first signs of a 6th planet-wide mass extinction.  Honey bees alone in the US have dropped from 6 million colonies to 2.5 since 1947. Insect activity is a major factor in the pollination that aids plant and food production. Bottom line: we could be in the throes of an "ecological Armaggedon" and life as we know it could go the way of the proverbial DoDo bird. Loss of habitat due to urban encroachment and climate change are at the heart of the problem. We cannot save the world as gardeners, but we can save our tiny piece of it by creating wildlife friendly safe havens. That doesn't mean just letting the deer run amuck. It means keeping an eye out for those tiny creatures underfoot who are not insignificant at all.

This isn't technically about plants---except maybe for the lovely mod floral pattern on our living room wool faux Persian rug. But having finally completed RANGE OF MOTION, a fictional tribute to a gardener's life, I have relinquished the computer most of the time to our fur-buddy Cody-Cat.  He seems intent on writing a fictionalized account of what it means to be feline. Working title is A CAT'S LIFE. His don't mess with me look is pretty much typical when we're in writer mode.  I get it: for me, RANGE OF MOTION is all about the life journey of a gardener, the overriding truth of that communication with the earth for so many of us. To all gardening cat lovers out there, hope this portrait of Cody-Cat produces knowing smiles.

Reports are circulating  that the Western Monarch butterfly is in trouble. Forty years ago, as many as 10 million would flock to California annually for the winter. But last year, the Monarch census in California counted only 30,000 of them---86 less than in 2017. Scientists are warning that number may not be enough for the species to survive. Habitat destruction is a problem. Fewer stands of the milkweed are available on which Monarchs lay their eggs and a favored food source.  Droughts triggered by global warming are also partly responsible.  The decision should be announced in June whether to declare these beautiful creatures an endangered species. Bottom line, sustaining wild areas with milkweed populations and planting bushes and perennials that attract the Monarch are crucial. My own giant butterfly bush bit the dust a winter ago, but I moved another to that same location and added a new plant as well.  Technically butterfly bushes are hardy enough for Northern Michigan but some botanists believe that the severe climate extremes might shorten the plant's life span. Whatever . . . the challenge ahead for summer includes the call to think 'Monarch'.

I  couldn't resist a bit of nostalgia. I love pocket gardens---the notion of tiny often very different spaces that might otherwise wind up as boring little patches of lawn, too small almost to mow. My garden in New York some years back was an extreme experiment: three distinct climate zones.  Sun and shade gardens and one bed on the west side of the house that qualified as arid. As a landscaper once said, if you are afraid of failure or can't tolerate losing a plant or two, don't try this at home. Note: it's no accident I don't have photos here of the 'arid' garden. I never did master it.  LOL

Gray skies are back. It was in the forties overnight. Time to break out the wild spring pops of color.  From primrose to heather and azaleas, the hot pinks are coming. Only 40 more days until spring. John and I use dwarf creeping phlox as to-scale ground cover on the hillsides of his model G-Scale railroad. The texture of the leaves is perfect after the blooming season is over.

Sunshine and a cloudless sky in the Southwest. Swirling white clouds of snow and ice in the Upper Midwest. Sigh. On the Monty Don program we watched last night, he was waxing eloquent about the contrast between the delicate pastels of early spring and the gaudy march of the tulips as the season nears its end---a prelude, as Monty sees it, to the bold colors of summer. Having given spring yellow its due a couple of days ago, I'm making it my challenge today to go for the softer colors of spring. From trillium to Dutchmen's Britiches, the possibilities are endless.

My amaryllis is on its last legs.  Sad. But how lovely it was while it lasted.  I managed this sketch before it wound down its blooming season which has reduced the poor thing to a single stalk.  I console myself that my miniature palm and Schlumbergera aka Christmas cactus are doing fine.  Then too spring is coming.

One of the neatest features of Google search is to watch what happens when you try to identify a plant whose name escapes you. Type in 'yellow flower' then hunt under images, and voila! The landscape in my Petoskey garden might be white and gray right now. But among my personal photos online, it is amazing under the categories 'spring' and 'yellow', what a variety turns up.

It has stopped raining. How amazing to have rained like this anyway in AZ---the country of blue skies and perpetual sun. I am sure we could use all that moisture. But still. . .it is nice to see blue up there through the clouds. The other day messing around with my many files of flower and plant photos, I kept stumbling across shots of things budding. With record cold blanketing my Petoskey garden, the thought of green things growing is just what the doctor ordered.

The Roman Janus is a two-faced god, looking back to the old year and forward to the new— and the month named after him can seem to go on forever. Meanwhile I forgot completely that February 1 is the Celtic solstice also known as Imbolc until a friend in NY posted a bit about it on facebook. In Ireland  it was celebrated popularly St. Brigid’s day, a Christianization of the pagan goddess Brigid. Kids would make a bed and leave out food for Brigid so she would stop and give the home her blessing. We had a wonderful visit to the Hill of Tara on a trip to Ireland, an ancient seat of governance and spiritual power in the country. One of the passage tombs there in fact is aligned to that solstice date at the beginning of February.The date was partly determined by the position of the sun and partly by length of days. And YES, those days are getting noticeably longer. Punxsutawney Phil says spring is coming early this year. Wouldn’t that be loverly? Photos: from top left---Hill of Tara, huge UNESCO passage tomb at New Grange, smaller passage tomb doorway at Tara, and below, protestors at Tara advocating return to ancient Irish law.

Chilly and rainy in the Southwest. Nothing, however, compared to photos friends are posting of Northern Michigan. Gonna think spring with some photos of things sprouting. Came across these 'rejects' from my husband and my SECOND LEAVES project several years ago, a beginning botany book for kids to help them understand how plants grow. I have fond memories of mud all over our dining room floor in NY when John was trying to use a light box to get shots of seedlings I had growing on the window sill. Turns out  the mess was worth it. Some unknown school or schools somewhere ordered 260 copies a while back---apparently to use the work as a textbook.  Really cool.  It was the largest ever single order of one of my books. Maybe we didn't use these particular shots, but it looks like the little guys are dancing.

One of Monty Don's GARDENERS WORLD programs just ran an episode highlighting hellebores. Oh my goodness, what an incredibly lovely plant it is.  I have four of them, a drop in the bucket in the hellebore world. But they make the transition from winter to spring so very, very special. I couldn't resist---with the polar vortex roaring around my Petoskey garden---hunting up a bunch of photos of this amazing plant. Think spring. As Monty says, it's unstoppable.