Grey Days are Ahead

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The blah days of another west coast winter are lying ahead of us, but there is still is still colour to be found. Although much of my garden goes dormant int he fall/winter, there are a few things that still provide some bright and interesting reasons to wander it when the summer days have faded away.

The paperbush is putting its flower buds out to set while the leaves are still available to feed the growth for a little longer. The leaves of this bush will turn yellow and fall in the next few weeks, leaving behind an interestingly structured plant covered in flower buds that will swell and open, as white spots of brightness over the trickling stream, in the latter part of January and continue to hang on until early March.

And the beautyberry has finished transitioning its little berries from an uninteresting green into bright splotches of purple on an otherwise uninspiring bush that grows with abandon and needs constant pruning to keep it somewhat behaved. When the leaves fall, the berries will stick around for a month or two as glossy little spots of purple against an otherwise drab background.

One other unusual plant that lives in a pot, currently under the dining room window, is this Trifoliate Orange, also known as a Flying Dragon Japanese Bitter Orange – a much better name than the first, don’t you think?

A dangerous little shrub. Dangerous because it is basically a thorn-bush that puts out some very pretty little white flowers in the spring. The leaves are nothing special, and this one has yet to throw out a fruit, but I originally bought it in the winter, because that’s truly when it’s the most interesting. When it has no leaves left, the contorted branching structure and evil thorns stand out in a bright green and provide something interesting when most else is nothing much to look at.