Mid-Winter Magic

Mid-Winter's Day - the shortest gardening day of the year. To continue a Moosey tradition, I'm filling my Winter Solstice Report with the most colourful, magical garden images I can find to photograph. All guaranteed taken on this very day. Brr...

Shades of Red

Rose hips and crab-apples are the best winter examples of the colour red in my garden. I grow a lot of show-off rugosa roses, and providing winter colour is definitely part of their job description.

 With a little red flax nearby.
Winter Crab Apples

And those jolly, shiny red crab apples are adored by the birds. I spend a lot of chair time watching their antics when the weather's just too cold.

Hot Chocolate, Anyone?

And this year there's a strange reddish rose still flowering in the pale, low winter sun. I think it's called Hot Chocolate, which is a very nice idea on this rather chilly day. Yum!

 What a hot colour for mid-winter!
Rose

Of course, all the beautiful red autumn leaves re long gone now. Lots have been raked and crammed into bags, others left on the gardens as mulch.

Yellows?

Yellow - well, well, well! I rescued an odd yellow daisy last spring from the supermarket, planted it, and immediately forgot about it. Not the most auspicious beginning, but guess who's still flowering? I think it's a perennial Helenium.

 Flowering in winter. This is what I have always called them.
Paris Daisies?

The Paris daisies are also going pretty well. I guess my bright yellow plastic buckets don't really count, though at the moment they're filled with some colourful flax clumps...

Pinks

I grow lots of salmon pink-toned flax hybrids, with names like Jester, Pink Panther, and a family of 'Maoris' - Maidens, Chiefs, and so on. My very best winter-flowering shrubs, Viburnum tinus, are completely covered with dots of soft pink.

 Jester flax.
Pink Toned Flax

For a splash of bright pink I can still enjoy the English rose John Clare. I wonder if John Clare the man likes winter? He is, after all, a famous poet, and his rose certainly does...

Purples

At all times of the year I can find purple violas flowering. In mid-winter they're sparsely dotted through the garden, but they're there. Some folk call them 'Johnny Jump-Ups. They are welcome to jump up and self-seed in my garden.

 There is a hebe in flower every month of the gardening year.
Purple Hebe Flower

Then my eyes are drawn up from ground level to the head-high purple flowering Hebes. These are superb shrubs - five dollars from the local nursery, and blooming at such a severe time of the year.

Blues

Blue - Hmm... This could be tricky. Blue-toned foliage doesn't count, and we just won't even mention snow, which can look very blue in winter photographs. But I can find three cheery blue garden seats, painted in memory of a holiday in tropical Samoa.

 Very colourful.
Three Blue Chairs

And I know that soon in spring there'll be bluebells, and grape hyacinths. Yeay!

Whites

White and silver tones are rather cold to warrant a mention. Winter extras like hail and frost come to mind. Aargh! And we simply won't think about snow. But the usual white Iceberg rose is still bravely blooming. Brr... What a chilly name!

 What a beautiful rose!
White Iceberg Rose

The colour grey is a winter special, but that's a matter for the sky and the cloud cover. No photographs allowed!

Greens

Obviously my garden is overflowing with every shade of green. Show me a paint chart, and I'll match every second tint with a winter leaf or a blade. I love the greens.

 Various leaves.
Green, Green, Green

I hope you enjoy the Mid-Winter's Day colours in my garden as much as I have.