It's Winter

For 4 days already, and it is no joking!

From My Point of View

From a Bird's Point of View

The feeder has been made by my husband a few years ago and has many guests especially in the morning.

And here is one of my greenhouses:

Not a Beauty at All, But – Hopefully – Practical

I think almost every garden has ugly parts which are better not shown to the visitor.

Our "garden" has now only ugly parts because all our plants are packed or somehow prepared for the winter. Very few go into the staircase, the rest remain outside on the balcony.

I will show you our unsightly garden.

In this large bin are the youngest seedlings and those little plants which must not get any moisture during the winter (for example some Lewisia species):

The miniature rock gardens in the window boxes are placed simply on the floor, but protected from the rain splash by a foil. This "tent" is open on both lateral sides:

The small evergreen trees are wintering below the worktable. The winter sun can not harm them this way.

Two larger pots with Cyclamen coum and C. purpurascens are put in buckets, like this:

And everything else is sleeping near the wall, where they get no rain, only some snow in case of snowstorms (well, last year they've got a lot). These have not to be protected from frosts, only from our erratic winter precipitation and eventually from the winter sun. In case of frosty sunshine in January I cover all this cavalcade with tho layers of garden mesh, to protect the evergreen perennials from too much evaporating when the compost is frozen hard.

November and Christmas Rose!

Until now November has been warm (20°C) with much sunshine. Many plants have flowered "ahead of shedule" here and everywhere in Europe.

This happened with that Christmas rose (Helleborus niger) at István Megyeri's garden, which Christmas rose is already ours :)
Alas, the sunshine is over now (the erudite say that winter comes next week), so I had very bad light conditions for photographing.

Ten

The author of Mûvelt kert invited me to a garden bloggers' game. I have to list ten favorite things and invite ten garden bloggers to the game.

So, I list the ten favorite alpine flowers  of mine, which I have already "met personally" in the Alps. I put here the pictures of my husband from his Picasa web album. The sequence does not matter, these are all equally favorites AT THIS MOMENT, though it is possible that tomorrow I would list other ten... :)

Physoplexis comosa

Campanula morettiana

Ranunculus glacialis

Soldanella pusilla

Primula glutinosa

Primula hirsuta

Eritrichium nanum

Androsace alpina

Saxifraga oppositifolia

And last, but not least, this one is not yet uploaded on the net:
Androsace helvetica

I am quite aware of the importance of inviting personally some bloggers and putting their links here, but I don't want to bother anybody with this, so I invite EVERYBODY who feel disposed to participate. If they send me a comment I will put the link here.

Late Autumn Bouquet

Orostachys and Sedum sieboldii

Surprise

This one had never flowered for us until now, neither in spring, nor in autumn. We bought it in Prague 3 years ago.

Draba imbricata

Draba imbricata

Harbingers of Spring

Yes I know this is a nonsense, because the pictures show some overwintering buds, not an oddity at all.
But after all  the spring explosion is somewhere packed in them, and so they contain the promises.

Two herbaceous perennials, whose buds are overwintering near the soil surface:

Cortusa matthioli Alba

Dodecatheon sp.

An early flowering evergreen perennial with buds overwintering in the leaf rosette:

Draba lasiocarpa

And finally a shrublet:

Daphne sericea

And then the camera's accumulators went dead... Maybe I will continue this topic later if I can find another promising buds around.