Back in January of this year, Karma (Karma’s When I Feel Like It Blog) suggested a four seasons photo hunt. I decided to include four more “seasons,” taking photos on Groundhog Day, May Day, Lammas Day and Halloween, which fall between the solstices and equinoxes. I will come back and add the final picture to this post when we get to the winter solstice.
Courtyard Gardens
North Carolina Botanical Garden
[to be added soon ~ Winter Solstice]
What a great idea! I think the Spring Equinox might be my favorite of this bunch, though. There’s something so promising about the splendor of the rest of the year when you look at these budding trees. Normally, of course, Fall is my favorite season, but I think I’d miss terribly not seeing those wild Fall colors!
The spring season down here seems extra long and magical and much more enchanting than the autumn, which is pretty dull from my New England frame of reference. Spring will be my favorite season down here, but my heart’s favorite season will always be the fall colors back home in Connecticut! I do miss them!!!
Love this! It is so interesting to watch a landscape through the seasons.
Thank you, Eliza! The changes can be pretty striking, especially since they’re so gradual.
I absolutely love this, Barbara! Your companion and your dedication that both of you two have is remarkable!!
Now if Tim would dress up as Santa for that lonely bench in the final Winter Solstice photo, I would become a believer, again. That would be magical! ❤️
Thank you so much, Teri! It’s been fun, especially since I had no idea what the changes would look like ahead of time. Tim does spend a lot of time on that bench, waiting patiently as I hone in on a bird, bee or butterfly. I’m not sure he’d be inclined to dress up as Santa, though! ❤️
Oh, I really didn’t think Tim would dress up as Santa, but I hope that you got a chuckle!
😊
What a nice collection of photos Barbara! It’s nice to see how Mother Nature lends a hand in helping the landscape thrive as the seasons progress. So much bright green in the photos. Our trees are past peak now and lots of leaves have fluttered to the ground with this incessant wind we have been having, so it is starting to look blah out there. We have not had a hard freeze, so no Indian Summer yet I did the same thing with Council Point Park standing at the beginning of the perimeter path a few years ago; it was fund to do.
Thank you, Linda! We haven’t had an Indian Summer down here either because we haven’t had a frost or a freeze yet. The meteorologists are going on and on about it on the news. Every day in November so far the temperature has been above or way above normal. We even had a couple of days in the 80s. Sigh. Even though the fall colors down here are rather dull, the green in the other seasons is truly spectacular. One of our doctors is on the sixth floor and I love looking out the window over the lovely green tree canopy which seems to go on for miles.
We did have a cold day today and I saw some frost on the grass on my walk, but it was not a hard freeze and the house where I admire his landscaping so much, has all his large pots of pink geraniums blooming away and nothing looks bedraggled, including all his mums. We have a heavy rain starting overnight and sporadic rain tomorrow, so they might not be as cheery looking after that. Our lawns are green like April and very lush. You and I think alike as I noticed it was green everywhere in your photos and how nice that was. I’ll bet the humid air keeps those leaves looking so good fresh – here they get parched looking by Summer’s end.
Yesterday it was cold and rainy here, and I was glad we did our weekly food shopping a day early so we didn’t have to go out in it. We’re abnormally dry on the drought monitor so I hope the rain helped. It was fun being tucked inside and getting a lot of inside projects done. Looks like we’ll still have to wait for a frost, though.
After such a mild and beautiful October and most of November so far (last week I got warm lugging in groceries and shed some layers, down to a sleeveless shirt – in early November!!), that rainy, gloomy and chilly day yesterday was not so nice. I was happy to be productive too due to the rain. I have to do some yardwork this weekend, so I hope it isn’t extremely windy for raking leaves – it seems pointless. We have a big campaign on the radio right now about not raking your leaves to help pollinators embed in them over the Winter and it supposedly helps your grass as well. A lot of our leaves have not fallen yet, despite these strong winds. As of today, no hard freeze for us – the annuals are still blooming like crazy, especially the geraniums!
I’m all for the “LEAVE YOUR LEAVES” campaign! We tons of those signs on people’s lawns in this town. 🍂 I hope the trend keeps spreading.
Me too Barbara! I had leaves out front but it was gusting 25-30 mph hours today and no one else rakes, so why bother? But for the backyard, the Winter’s winds will just blow them back into my yard. I do my “groundhog burrow check” every day since the Fall of 2023 groundhog burrow debacle and today I saw that the squirrels had dug at least 40 holes in the new mulch. At least it will be easy to find them as there is landscape fabric underneath … maybe that frustrates them then as it’s too shallow?
Hmmm, I do wonder what a squirrel would do about landscape fabric. My guess is that if they can chew through the wires in a car they can probably chew through the landscape fabric, too. Well, we finally got our first freeze this morning, November 22. May the ragweed pollen be gone now!
I searched for that and found info on putting down cayenne pepper or peppermint oil spray, but that gets expensive after a while. The generator sits in a bed of pea gravel and I saw holes being dug – I didn’t know if it was the squirrels or the groundhog, so I Googled and learned to put cayenne pepper around – that stopped the digging, but it’s not a big area like the perimeter gardens are. I like squirrels at the Park, but they can be a pain in the yard. Jeff finally quit feeding them … he said they dug up his flowers and the rabbits ate the rest of the flowers (they were all annuals). After I got all the landscape fabric and mulch down, I admit I had forgotten about the squirrels doing that. Right now we have a huge Cooper’s Hawk in the neighborhood. I don’t talk to Jeff much, but he told me he has seen it nab a squirrel in the yard. They go for birds as well. Sigh. Funny because we finally got a hard freeze too. It was 31 this morning when I got up and it was blustery, cold and still had snow flurries but nothing settling down. We have had gusty winds for weeks on end. Good riddance to the ragweed pollen!
I’ve come to believe that feeding the wildlife near our homes invites nothing but trouble! Still, it’s hard to resist the impulse. Somebody made quick work of the pumpkins we put on our porch. We weren’t going to bother putting anything out this year but we got free pumpkins when we took the grandkids to a farm for a fun fall day. And a friend gave me a pot of mums which didn’t do so well. With all these trees I don’t think they got enough sun.
Do you know if it was the squirrels or the deer that munched on the porch pumpkins? I have seen squirrels going into the pumpkin through the top or biting the eyes/nose/mouth and entering that way to feast inside. People take their Halloween pumpkins to Elizabeth Park for all the squirrels. They don’t have deer, but the squirrels demolish them. I am correcting what I said about the hard freeze – I don’t think we had a hard freeze … my one small rose has bloomed and looks perky. It did get to 31 though, but not the freeze that whitens everything.
What fun! The photos vividly show the changing season. This series of photos makes me think that I should try to remember to take photos from the same spot in my backyard numerous times across the year.
It was fun, Sheryl, and I’m already scouting out a spot to do another series for next year. 🙂 You’re lucky to have a spot in your backyard that will work — I’ve got too many trees in mine.
What a difference several hundred miles makes, lol. Spring comes so much more quickly there than in New England. I love that you chose to do the extra shots.
It has been a warmer than usual and much drier than usual autumn here. We’ve had some freezes and frosts, but also days in the mid 70’s in November. There have been many brush fires too. Hoping for a good drenching rain soon.
Such a difference! My first clue was when the daffodils came out down here in February! According to the meteorologists on TV it’s been warmer and drier than average usual down here, too. We haven’t had a frost or a freeze yet. I’ve been hearing about the drought and brush fires in New England — I do hope you get some rain very soon.