Today we woke up to a still, crisp and cold morning here in the West of Ireland.
Down by the pond the ice was quite thick and all the plants were covered in beautiful sparkling ice crystals.
Walking down the garden path we were delighted to see all the grasses shimmering in the morning light.
We spent another ten minutes just wandering slowly through the garden, marvelling at the natural beauty to be found all around.
After that it was time to harvest some kale, fill up the bird feeders and head inside for a cup of steaming hot coffee. Life is beautiful.
thegreenerdream 
These are lovely scenes! Even a cabbage (in your 2nd shot?) can look festive and beautiful, dressed up with ice crystals.
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Thank you Robert!
Glad you enjoyed the pictures. The cabbage really did look spectacular with the contrast between bright pink and icy white. It was such a joy to discover the whole garden in a different state this morning.
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I like all your photos of the frost that formed on the trees, plants and flowers. It was very cold outside.
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Glad you enjoyed the photos Josie!
It was so cold that my fingers went numb from holding the camera. 😊
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Lovely photos, I can almost feel the nip in the air! It’s fascinating how frost changes the whole perspective of the garden, it’s quite magical. I love the fact that the frosted vegetables are every bit as photogenic as the other stars in the garden. Life certainly IS beautiful. 🙂 By the way, thanks again for introducing me to the work of Mary Reynolds, I’ve just collected ‘The Garden Awakening’ on our current trip to Wales, I’m trying desperately not to read it until we’re back in Spain but I feel my resolve slipping, it looks like a real treat of a read.
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Oh, I’m so glad you got Mary’s book. I love it and the illustrations are just so beautiful.
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I think you will enjoy the book and I would be just like you, not able to wait for reading it. 💚🌱
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Mmm, have to admit to falling off the book wagon last night!!!! It really is beautiful and so in tune with my own approach, I suspect I shall read it many, many times. Can’t wait to be back in our own garden tomorrow evening. 🙂
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That looks uncomfortably cold. I think it would be fun to experience a real winter, but I would not want to contend with seriously cold frosts. It gets cool enough here for what I want to grow. I can pass on the peonies and some cultivars of apples if it means we get mild weather here.
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I like the milder weather too and that is why I moved from my native Sweden to the relatively mild climate of Ireland. We have not had any more hard frosts so far this year, only the once, but it will probably be a bit colder in January and February. You can grow a lot of things where you are that we cant grow here and that must be nice. But my tree ferns are still coping well here. I might wrap them up in straw bundles soon if we get more severe weather.
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What people do not often consider about mild climates is that plants that require winter chill do not perform well here. There are a few cultivars of apple and pear that are unreliable here. In Southern California, there re only two cultivars of apple that are reliable, and they are not very good. Pears and North American maples do not do well there at all. Peonies are not worth bothering with.
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Yes I agree, it is best to stick to what suits the climate and habitat. There is a lot of reasearch now because of the warming climate into apples that will crop well with less chilling hours. We have about 8 different cultivars of apples here and they do crop differently year from year depending on the weather.
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There are about the same number at the farm, although most are ‘Gravenstein’. However, at least two cultivars are not very happy. One might be a red delicious, which really wants chill. Another is a hard (like wooden) green apple, like for cider. Someone who worked there years ago grafted another onto an otherwise good ‘Gravenstein’. It is no happier than the one that seems to be ‘Red Delicious’. (I do not like it, but can not bear to cut it out either.)
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