Early Winter at North Hill
A gentle snow is falling this morning, the kind of fat, straight-down flakes that catch on every surface, every tree, bush and twig, making even the scrawniest of them glorious. There is nothing particularly unusual about a snowfall in Vermont in early December, except perhaps that this one should have been the tenth so far, leaving snow piled deep over the garden. It is the first sign we have had of real winter, and it is delayed. Scholars of snow that we are, we know that this kind of snow will be followed by cold, bright sunshine and a bitter night, and then the ground will turn iron hard, the chickens and geese will scarcely venture from their warm house, and the cats will stare out the back door that we have politely opened at their insistence, and then think better of going out. Better, they think for all of us to sit in front of the fire and accept that winter is finally here. We are as glad as they are to do that.
That is not to say that we did not enjoy our long, languorous autumn, and the incongruity of a November that was warm and humid, sometimes uncannily like early spring. (One foolish, pale whitey-green hellebore actually flowered profusely.) During the past month, we have never seen such beauty at this season. That was in part because we lie beneath a major bird migration path, and the robins that usually fly over (and into) our garden in huge numbers were deceived by the warmth this year, and either had to rush by without visiting us, or were somehow diverted into another flight path. So the garden remained rich with berries. Four great llex verticillata, the native deciduous holly, grow across the front of the house and have reached the eaves, with trunks as thick as young cherry trees. Their berries are always the first to be taken, though we see bushes standing in the swamps and lowlands all around us that are never touched. Now, in mid-December, their twigs are clustered with scarlet fruit, vivid against the weathered gray wood of the house and wonderful viewed from indoors, hung with snow. The robins' (robbing') next choice would have been the crab apples, but though their fruit got soft and russet early in November, it still hung thick on the branches, translucent globules glistening with moisture in the wan light. And a single plant of Euonymus fortunei that scrambles up an old maple tree near the stream, the most prolifically fruiting specimen we have ever seen, retained the heavy weight of its orange fruit, spangling its black-green leaves.
Mostly, however, we notice twigs, which seemed unusually brilliant, perhaps because of the warmth, or more probably because they were often glazed with rain. The powdered stems of the whitewashed bramble, Rubus cockburnianus, surprised us every time we passed it on the edge of the woods, as if it were a ghostly person standing there. The golden-leaved form, Rubus cockburnianus 'Aureus,' added tones of plum to its powdered white stems, and, though never as vigorous as its green counterpart – as thuggish, we might have said – it still had the time to burrow the tips of its stems into soft loam, producing three or four long-awaited pups. The original plant was a gift from Prince Wolkonsky, and now we have it to pass on to other gardeners. For when a plant is given to you, you have a double obligation to share it.
Even the young stems of the sometimes scorned native moose wood (Acer pennsylvanicum)were a fine, chalky purplish gray. Though the tree is native hereabouts in the woodland understory, it is what old Vermonters dismissively call “scrub,” and curse for getting in the way of their hunting. But we have transplanted several into the garden, where they form lovely little trees when freed of competition and given better light. We encourage young stems by pollarding them to develop the strongest twig color, but they have seldom repaid the practice with so much beauty. And the stems of its much sought rare selection, Acer pennsylvanicum 'Erythrocladum,' which should be an enameled scarlet red, finally were, though in a normally cold November, a dingy coral is all we have ever gotten.
Still, for all the beauty of the garden in November, we felt something sinister underneath, something unnatural, something dangerous. We know from other unusually mild autumns that the bottom can suddenly drop out, that masses of arctic cold can descend on us in a night, leaving even normally hardy plants unprepared, still turgid with sap, unequipped with the natural anti-freeze they seem able to acquire if given a decent warning. So as a caution, we laid on more evergreen boughs than usual, doubling the thickness on heaths and heathers, hellebores, even rosettes of foxglove grown wide and stout through the long moist autumn. An extra dose of Wilt-proof was applied to all the broad-leaved evergreens – the rhododendrons, evergreen hollies, leucothoes – and all the bamboos were carefully bent to ground, covered with Remay and then with more evergreen boughs.
Shrub roses received a similar protection, for without it, we might have no roses here at all. There are perhaps fifty of them in the garden, and most are thorny. None is thornier than 'Seagull,' a climber with trunks as thick as broomsticks, each trunk terminating in wild, waving rods armed tip to bottom with fierce hooked thorns. It is the hardiest of climbers, but it cannot be allowed to wave about in frigid, sub-zero weather, particularly with the winter sun reflecting on it from the snow. For in our experience winter sun is the condition most fatal to the survival of marginal plants. It is now spread out across the back lawn like an octopus, covered with Remay and boughs. But its clouds of fragrant white flowers in June will make it worth the work, and all the bloodied scratches.
It is all hard work, and it ends with placing huge plywood crates over the great English boxwood to exclude all light and wind. The section of deer fence must be put up across our road frontage, and joined to the greater expanse that circles through the woods and protects the garden. When all these labors are done, we have a strong sense of security, and can take greater pleasure in the two sorts of flowers we will have for three months or more, the ice flowers on the window panes, and those we cultivate in the greenhouses. With a good conscience, we can take up a book and join the cats before the fire.
Best Wishes from North Hill,
Wayne Winterrowd
Joe Eck
