Snowy Christmas Lights
We leave the Christmas lights on the Korean Fir in our front yard garden through much of January to brighten the long winter nights and in hopes of getting a little snow.
This year we had to wait until January 17 to get our first snowfall of the winter. Tonight, the 18th, I took my camera outside in the bitter cold to photograph the tree and its setting. I used my Canon 1Ds Mk II with a 16-35mm lens and photographed at the widest setting. I wanted to emphasize the space and separate the tree from our house and other buildings in the neighborhood. Continue reading
Thick, leathery, glossy, evergreen foliage makes salal (Gaultheria shallon) desirable both in the garden and in the florist’s palette. This time of year you won’t find either flowers or fruit on salal — those will come in the warm months — but the foliage provides a comforting green layer at the edge of woodlands. Salal is particularly common along the Pacific coast from southeast Alaska all the way down to Santa Barbara county, California. It also grows up into the middle elevations of the Cascade and Coast Ranges. 
Resist the temptation. Do not get in a hurry to cut down those spent flower stems when the blooms fade.
December and January are dark, cool, and wet in Pacific Northwest lowlands while the high country is buried under a thick blanket of snow. It’s sometimes challenging to bring high-elevation plants down to lowland gardens but Mountain Hemlock, Tsuga mertensiana, is an exception. 
