There’s still not a lot blooming, neither native nor cultivated, so I’ll continue on the theme of bark. It’s something I tend to notice more in the winter than the summer, although none of these photos are truly winter images.

The detail of peeling flowering cherry bark with a nice collection of lichens was growing along Azalea Way at the Washington Park Arboretum in Seattle. I don’t know the variety of cherry, nor the names of the lichens. Several of the trees and shrubs harbor lichens and mosses. They thrive in our wet winters.

Some of the most interesting bark peels dramatically, like this river birch (Betula nigra) growing in the garden at Oklahoma State University in Oklahoma City.

River birch is native to most of the eastern United States, including Oklahoma. It thrives in wet habitats in the wild, but in cultivation will tolerate drier conditions. I’ve read at least one report that Native Americans boiled the sap into a syrup, similar to maple syrup, and on occasion used the inner bark as an emergency survival food. I’ve never tried either, and have some difficulty imagining eating bark. But I’ve never been that hungry.

Many of our birches have interesting bark. Probably one of the most recognizable North American trees is paper birch (Betula papyrifera), known in most of its range for bright white bark that peels in horizontal strips. It is native all across the northern United States and almost all of Canada. West of the Cascades where I live you often find it with darker, less dramatic bark that makes it more difficult to recognize.

Trees with interesting bark aren’t just limited to North American natives. This Tasmanian Snowgum (Eucalyptus coccifera), was planted as a dramatic ornamental in the alpine garden at the University of British Columbia Botanical Garden.

I photographed the snowgum in color, and this photo has appeared in print in its original form. This version was converted to black and white in Adobe Lightroom, which gives all the control over black and white that a film photographer had with a complete set of filters. Actually, Lightroom gives even more control than we had with filters and film because one can adjust each of the additive and subtractive primary colors individually. Thus, I could render the blue sky dark like a polarizer would, darken the green foliage, and brighten all the reds and yellows.

Photography is a combination of art and craft, creative decisions and science. It helps to know a little of each. The craft and science are the underpinnings that allow creative realization. The best ideas have little value if they can’t be rendered into a sharable form.

Bark is cool. In the middle of winter maybe that’s all you’re going to find that’s interesting in the garden or out in the forest. Look closely. Enjoy the texture. Marvel at the colors. Maybe not quite psychedelic but often far out just the same. OK, maybe I’m showing my age here.

The tree above is the biggest Crape Myrtle I’ve ever seen. It’s a Lagerstroemia fauriei, photographed in late September at the J C Raulston Arboretum in Raleigh, North Carolina. You can see more from this garden, and several other North Carolina gardens at NC Gardens on my website.

Here in the Northwest one of my favorite trees for winter bark is the Madrona, sometimes called Madrone, or Arbutus menziesii. This one was photographed on a rainy day on Pass Island at Deception Pass State Park in early March. The soft light and the rain really enhance the color of the bark and the wood where it’s peeled away.

In our area Madronas only grow on rather dry sites, generally quite close to salt water but above the splash zone. They’re often on rocky bluffs where the soil is thin and well drained. Their roots find cracks where they can get enough moisture during the dry summer months. They’re broadleaf evergreens, but never seem to have a lot of foliage. In the spring they’ll have pendant bunches of white bell-shaped flowers, like their Heather relatives, and clusters of orange berries later on. But it’s in the winter that I like them the best.

Farther south Madronas grow farther inland and can be substantial trees. I photographed one several years ago around Medford that had a trunk at least 18-24 inches in diameter.

Just because the weather is wet and overcast is no reason to put your camera away. Of course, you want to keep it from getting too wet, but an ordinary plastic grocery bag will do the job in a pinch. Or keep you camera covered until you find the right shot and just pull it out to shoot. I try not to change lenses in the rain, especially with digital SLRs, but you could always ask your best friend to hold their umbrella over your camera for you.

Happy New Year! Take power from the mighty beet, symbol of the new agrarian world order.

We dug beets from our garden for both Christmas dinner and a treat to share at a New Year’s party last night. The recipe combines fresh beets, pineapple, a bit of chopped onion and celery with wine vinegar and olive oil. Stir together and chill overnight for a tasty salad. At last night’s party some of us discussed whether the neighborhood-grown beets balanced the Hawaiian pineapple for locavore status. What do you think?

This being the mild Pacific Northwest we gardeners sometimes joke that spring begins on New Year’s Day. We try to have something blooming in our garden year-around and today is no exception. What’s blooming in your garden today?

Our Dawn Viburnum, Viburnum bodnatense, has been blooming since about Thanksgiving and will continue for at least another month. I like the pale pink hue of the blossoms. When the weather turns really cold, like under 20°F then the blossoms freeze and turn black. When it warms up again then fresh buds open and we’re back in the pink. It’s fragrant, but not overpowering.

Today is very windy so the fragrance flew up the street pretty fast, but I stuck my nose in the blossoms to enjoy the scent.

We’ve got a nice patch of Hellebores growing under the Dawn Viburnum. They haven’t started blooming yet, but the flower buds are swelling. Depending on how warm January turns out to be, they could be starting to open before the month is over.

We have three big clumps of these dark red hybrids, an unnamed cultivar of Helleborus x hybridus that we picked up from a plant sale down in Seattle a few years ago as a single stem. They’re obviously happy in our fairly sunny front bed and may need to be divided again this year or next.

Most of the parentage of these hybrid Hellebores is Helleborus orientalis, the Lenten Rose. The common name reflects their habit of being in bloom for Lent. The flowers look a bit like single roses, but they’re actually members of the Ranunculaceae, the buttercup family.

Over on the other side of our front yard garden, nestled close by the Korean Fir that serves as our Christmas tree, is a big clump of Corsican Hellebores, Helleborus argutifolius.

These are big plants with stout foliage that stays strong and green all winter long. I really like the leathery foliage with its spiky edges which almost looks otherworldly. Before long these flower buds will be opening, revealing soft pale green blossoms that will look good for several months in our garden.

Pretty much any kind of Hellebore is happy growing in Northwest gardens. We don’t have as many as some gardeners, just enough to enjoy having a few around. I’ve known gardeners to get obsessed over every sort of coloration, petal doubling, picotee edges and other details. There are worse obsessions.

We have several varieties of Heather scattered around our garden. This one I think is ‘Sherwood’s Early Red.’ Like many other plants we started with just a little start years ago and have divided it as it grew. Now we have it several places in the garden and have shared pieces with Natalie’s mother for her garden, too.

The heather has just started blooming, but like many of the other winter-blooming flowers it has a very long season and will be in bloom until March if not later. On warmer and less windy days the bees will find the blossoms.

All of these photos today were made with my little Canon S70 pocket camera. For most of them I used the close-up mode, setting the lens at its widest zoom and moving in very close. I’ve found that extreme close-ups work a lot better that way than zooming in and trying to focus close. The camera just won’t do it. Focusing on the Viburnum blossoms was a big challenge as the camera wanted to make the house in the background sharp and ignore the flowers. I had to try several times to get what I wanted. I held onto the stem the flowers were on so that they didn’t blow around while trying to focus. The light is from the very soft gray sky, using the cloudy white balance setting. There’s been a little processing of the raw files in Lightroom to finish them.