This weekend brought the coldest temperatures of the season -- a low of 2 degrees -- but that didn't stop a merry group of friends from journeying into the Georgia mountains for a weekend at the cabin. We hiked Friday and Saturday through beautiful, pristine, national forest, crossed streams and rivers, and enjoyed the natural landscape that a greater power put before us. Our only disappointment was the sight of wooly adelgids on scattered branches of the canadian hemlocks that blanket the forest. Oh, when they go, how different this world will be.

Going Live

After gardening in the soil for more years than I care to count, and gardening "on paper" for more than 10, it seems appropriate now to enter the 21st century by gardening online ... in the form of this blog that will allow for regular meanderings with no deadline or style format in sight. A great freedom. Today, the garden mostly sleeps, although the winter jasmine has been in brilliant yellow flower for more than a week. Even the autumnalis cherry is throwing off a few flowers despite the cold nighttime temperatures. With the cold, I've filled the birdfeeders as a nod to my feathered friends' long nights. So they're having a tea party, flitting in and around the feeders outside my office window. Titmouse, finch, cardinal, mourning dove, bluejay, chickadee -- and one squirrel who managed to outsmart the "squirrel-proof" feeder and chow down. Meanwhile, Baloo notices them occasionally and barks ferociously. The birds, of course, ignore him as inconsequential.