meteor misses east coast

wow: from my view, the meteor hit somewhere near the potomac in charles county at about 12:40pm on valentine's day this week, but it actually fell into the ocean...this time...yeah: i saw it while driving on route 301 on the harry nice bridge leaving virginia, heading into maryland...of course: no one believed me, but i saw what i saw...and what i saw was something (fairly) large...on fire...headed toward the ground at a high rate of speed...sooo glad i am not alone!

national bird feeding month

the birds dont really need our help to find food this time of the year, but attracting birds to your yard can make the doldrums of winter seem so much brighter! so, dutifully, i cleaned and filled my freeze-less bird bath and filled the feeders around the yard last week in honor of national bird feeding month...but no one came: it has been so cold here in the temperate mid-atlantic, that even the birds are staying indoors! the bird feeder stayed full-even the squirrels werent interested-until sunday when we got a spring preview with temperatures in the mid-40's: then i saw me some birds! i saw six swans on the potomac...an eagle sitting in her (?) nest...titmice and chickadees...a flock of blue birds hanging with a bunch of waxwings...several thousand cackling grackles...a red shouldered hawk...a coopers hawk...four or five different varieties of woodpecker-types...and a white breasted nuthatch.  a ring necked kingfisher perched above my head on a dog walk by rock creek. 
now there are cardinals, robins and of course, starlings.

making lemonade

as i walk around my neighborhood after snowmagedon 2.0 i cant help but notice the vast amounts of fallen brush and branches caused by last week's heavy snow/ice combo...

many of the piles have been tagged as "too large" by our sanitation engineers, so they are laying all over the place.

why not recycle some of it into something fantastic?

canadian design group urban tree salvage showed off some of their inspired pieces at the 2011 toronto design show last week.

they need to get some trucks down here stat!

omg: gmo alfalfa approved

for the last few years, a consortium of organic growers have fought the use of bio-engineered seed by big business. the growers  are fighting the use of 'gmo's for a variety of reasons...mainly because bees pollinating genetically modified plants would also visit nearby organic crops, thus polluting them. well, according to slash food: they gave up! monsanto has just received the food and drug administration's backing to grow unrestricted amounts of alfalfa...to feed livestock, among other things...great.

Snowmagedon: Deja vu all over again

I took this a few hours ago... Now it's 8 inches deeper, dark and the power is out! ahhhh...winter!


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in need of a little sunshine and warmth?

because the snow and cold are getting old :) already.

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garden show

get out of the frigid air and go indoors to the 68th annual cleveland home & garden show today through january 30th. 

modern landscape design

i love the seamless carpet-style design of this landscape installation in beer sheba, israel...read more about the landscape architects' concept here.

a garden bench

a few weeks ago i went down to the national mall for a little museum hopping. i dont know if these benches are recent acquisitions by the castle or not, but i never noticed them before: they are quite beautiful and unexpected!

best plants for winter

as the bleakness of winter gets, well, bleaker, these are the plants i wish i had planted to give me a little mid winter color...they are on my list for this year!

red twig dogwood: i like the variety with the variegated leaves so it looks good all year round.

rosa rugosa: lovely large hips!

beauty berry: purple berries: need i say more?

harry lauder's walking stick:

i love this gnarly plant!  i have killed several starter ones, but look forward to giving another one a try soon...

 camellias!

my neighbor has a large-obviously very old-camellia shrub adjacent to her house that has huge and wonderful rose-like blooms all winter- just when you're longing for some color. i have been admiring it for many winters now, but every year its beauty continues to surprise me.

variegated holly bush...

i am not a fan of the sharp holly leaves in the summer time, with the bare feet and all. but, come winter its full silhoette is a welcome site! my favorite holly is this variegated variety: it is very festive around the holidays with the lovely red berries. many different types of birds live off of these berries in winter: robins, starlings, a bunch of different tree-clinging, wood-pecker-type birds, wax-wings (love them!) and cardinals to name a few.

hellebores...it took a few years to get my single one established, but now it blooms faithfully every late january and is even beginning to spread a bit, but i need more than one...

heathers and heaths are so pretty, especially on a wnter's day like today! this variety, Calluna vulgaris 'firefly' looks like a cluster of mini red hot pockers!

witch hazel blooms before forsythia, which i like because they signal the start of warmer days.

snow drops are

the first to show up in earliest spring: that's why they're great! 

i need blossoms!

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