This is it. This is when it all begins. It’s President’s Day. It’s time to sow the sweet peas! And that means the great rush and push of spring begins this week. I’m taking just a moment at home this holiday to mark the seasonal shift with a small awards ceremony. Then I plan to curl back up with my pestering cashmere cat, a restorative cup of tea and a book.

Caroline at Earth Friendly Gardening awarded this blog an E for Excellent and I’d like to pass it back to her and to a few others. First I’d like to say Thank You to everyone who has been reading and joining the conversation here. Your comments have led me and others to your own E for Excellent blogs. The intention with the award is to single out my favorites but I want to spin it a bit back to you. To start the ball rolling, I’ll send an award to Robin at Bumblebee. I haven’t been a faithful reader but her comment on my last post led me to Bumblebee again this morning. I found this post -and others- recommending that you get out to public gardens and flower shows and bring home whatever useful ideas you find there. I loved reading that because it’s a reminder that Blithewold and all other public gardens are a resource just for you. We need you to visit and are really only gratified if you like what you see enough to try it at home. (Deciding to become a member is gratifying for us too - and keeps us in plants and ideas.) Has anyone else out there written about visiting - and being inspired by - a public garden? Please send the link(s) and take an E for Excellent home with you! (Layanee, Jodi, Pam, and Digital Flower, I know you have many posts about public garden visits - please send your favorites and consider yourselves Excellent.)

I can’t let a 15th of any month go by anymore without a peruse for blooms for Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day - now a year old at May Dreams Gardens! This time of year it’s not easy to find outdoor blooms - I actually can’t tell if the hellebore is blooming today or still fully in bud (I didn’t want to track footprints into the bed to investigate)! More shall be revealed with the melt… Like most gardeners with a real hibernation style winter, we have more blooms indoors. Here is a little greenhouse selection:

Today at Blithewold has otherwise been about undoings. The garden volunteers came in to help finish un-decorating the house. It was a morning of organized chaos; a calm implosion of glitter and ribbon and a chance to reconnect with friends after the holidays. There is something about undoing that is a lot like gardening - it’s fairly tedious and yet relaxing (or is it mind-numbing? This group who spooled miles of tulle called it some kind of therapeutic - “moron therapy” I think it was…) and it’s completely gratifying to see the tree un-ornamented and boxes neatly packed and labeled - like finally taking a good satisfied look at the garden you spent all morning on your knees weeding. It seems like we only just decorated the tree and it will seem like only another moment before we’re back in the gardens together again. A couple of garden volunteers were honored at lunch today - Ann A. is beginning her 31st year in the gardens and Louise W. her 26th - that’s amazing dedication and devotion! And this gardener was honored and completely undone - I know now what it means to be “showered”! I’m going against the grain to include this picture of me (this blog is about Blithewold!) but I want those of you to whom my back was turned to see the giant grin you placed on my face (the tears didn’t show in the photo). Merci beaucoup beaucoup beaucoup!!

The Holidays are perfectly timed. Long before there was a Christmas Day everyone knew a wintertime festival was just what we gardeners need. Some of us feel defeated by dormancy, stressed by frenzied consumerism, chilled to the bone and blue. But winter gives us a much needed chance to rest and recharge (it’s the “hibernal” season after all), and it’s our best excuse for indulging in egg nog, singing out loud in public and a having indoor garden parties.

Tomorrow will be the shortest, dimmest day of the year but in the gardener’s lexicon (this one’s anyway) the winter solstice is the official start of summer. Day after day the sun will climb, and night after night will shorten and it all leads minute by minute to You-Know-What! — Another season in the garden! If that’s not a good reason to whoop it up in the drear of winter then I don’t know what is! So in honor of the return of the light, here are a few bright pictures from this past growing season - a smidgen of a hint of all we have to look forward to:

I’m going to spend the rest of my work day today watering and grooming in the greenhouse and tidying the potting shed as if I’m preparing for a journey - even though I’m staying right here. The next time I’ll be at Blithewold it will be a totally different season. Gail and I will be surrounded by stacks of magazine back issues we haven’t had time to read yet, notebooks for writing down borrowed and newly minted garden ideas, and seed and plant catalogues for ordering our spring universe - Joy to the World, friends and gardeners and Happy Solstice!

It’s easy to buy a wreath. Get a basic balsam wreath, throw a ribbon on it and you’re golden, right? But are you proud? If you make your own wreath instead, I guarantee you will glow with I-made-that! satisfaction every time you open your front door. And it’s such the perfect thing for any of us gardeners who might have early onset cabin fever and need all the green-stuff creative outlets we can get.

Step one: Look around and see if you or any of your neighbors has beautiful evergreens in need of a trim. Always, always, always ask permission first before pruning! (I know that’s obvious to most of you - unfortunately there is someone in our neighborhood who does not remember to ask permission…)

2. Assemble your materials. Along with a variety of greens you’ll need a frame and 22 gauge wire (available at floral, crafts suppy stores and garden centers), pruners and a wisp (at least) of holiday spirit.

3. Go!

Attach the wire to the frame so that if you tug on the wire it won’t unravel. Cut and put together a bundle of mixed greens - hint: using a backbone of white pine or balsam in each bundle will make a fairly sturdy, non-floppy wreath. Another hint: Make your first bundle extra long so that your last bundle can tuck underneath without sticks showing. Attach the bundle by winding the wire around the frame a time or two. Layer all subsequent bundles on the stick ends of the previous. Hint #3: If you want a fat wreath, closely overlap the bundles; to make a skinny wreath (ie, for inbetween door and stormdoor), make longish bundles and lay them farther apart. Keep checking as you go for symmetry. It’s easy to get stalled in one spot piling bundle after bundle in a skyscraper building sort of way, so watch out for that! Also (and this is what happens to me) don’t lose steam towards the end putting on thinner and thinner bundles because you’re “ready to be done now!” When you’ve made it all the way around, hold it up for a look because chances are you’ll need one or two more bundles (it’s inevitable). When you’re truly done, tie off the wire by passing the spool through a sewing loop and leaving a long strand of wire, snip it using wire cutters or the notch in your pruners (never cut with the blade!) and use that length of wire to (proudly!) hang up your wreath.

To make a bow, pinch a small loop of ribbon between your thumb and forefinger. Working back and forth, make loops pinched in the middle until you have an even number on both sides of the middle mini loop. Cut the ribbon leaving a tail; cut another tail piece to attach and wrap a wire through to grab the wad between your fingers. Hint: Wired ribbon is the most forgiving.

My very first wreath was most certainly egg shaped - but I was never more proud. This one is, remarkably, pretty roundish! Wahoo!

I made this wreath from workshop leftovers of white pine tips, Chamaecyparis pisifera ‘Filifera Aurea’, C. pisifera ‘Squarrosa’, C. pisifera ‘Plumosa’, C. obtusa (Hinoki Cypress), Thujopsis dolobrata ‘Variegata’, Ilex aquifolium (English Holly), Buxus sempervirens ‘Rotundifolia’, and Rosa multiflora.

Everyone who participated in Saturday’s workshop went home with a wreath to be proud of and just like snowflakes, no two were at all alike! Do you make your own wreaths or any other holiday decorations? (Aren’t you proud?)

I have to diverge from my usual “Blithewold Gardens” theme for just a moment this rainy day to mention “Christmas at Blithewold“. Raise your hand if you finished your gift shopping in July and your lights are up — Christmas at Blithewold is for you! Hands up if you’re feeling slightly resentful that all over everywhere bucket trucks were putting up trees and lights before you even had a chance to finish your Dagwood style Thanksgiving leftovers sandwich — Christmas at Blithewold is made for you too!

Volunteer decorators, house staff, Fred and Dan, garden volunteers, and Gail and I have been working on getting Blithewold decked for the season since –gasp– before Halloween! And I can’t think of a better way to find some holiday cheer and most excellent decoration ideas to take home than to visit the house and grounds this time of year. The whole house is like a display garden with idea beds. It doesn’t matter if your own method of decorating is like mine (flinging a mismatched menagerie of ornaments on a tiny tree and wrapping presents at the last minute using blue tape because where’d the scotch tape go?) or like Martha’s with a different color scheme every year and a tree full of white lights and angels. Either way you’ll find a spirit of fun and creativity in all the different rooms and ideas that you can’t help but want to bring home.

Fred and Dan come up with a new way to light the grounds every year what they do is worth trying to copycat (the highest compliment!). This year their show might not stop traffic the way the star topped sequoia or the bebobbled gingko did but it will delight all who come through the gates for a closer look. I don’t want to give it totally away but I bet you’ve never seen a star magnolia flowering like ours!

The garden volunteers, Gail, Julie and I helped to decorate the 18′ front hall tree - if you look closely you’ll see a reflection of me hanging out on the balcony scaffold taking Gail’s portrait. And Gail and I picked greens from all over the property (we’ve got 7 different chamaecyparis’s!) for Gail’s front door wreath and my container arrangements.

So if you’re anywhere nearby and are either totally into the Christmas spirit already or need to have the inner humbugger exorcised, I hope you’ll come over and see what we made for you!

I went looking for Halloween this morning. I think I found it.

Mary’s Tupelo (Nyssa sylvatica) is dressed in red rags for the costume party. And the Jerusalem artichokes (Helianthus tuberosus) looked like a legion of ghouls advancing out of the mist…

Creepy lives in the weeping trees.

The family might not have actually buried their dogs in the Bosquet but the terriers are still chasing squirrels here - I could sense it.

There are days for Mothers, Grandparents, Secretaries - and Goblins! Today is the day to celebrate your inner goblin and look for Creepy in your garden too - Happy Halloween!