08 New Year's Eve

Around Christmas, Phil and I finished terracing the backyard by constructing two garden beds at the top left of the staircase. We were pounding six-foot-long fence posts into the ground, when we noticed a hawk had landed on the fence behind our house.

It sat there for an hour or so, before swooping down into a neighbor's yard. It returned to the fence to eat its catch. We were not only surprised by its size, but by how quietly it dropped into the neighbor's yard and, later, vanished without either Phil or me noticing.

The blue anemone was the first anemone to bloom this winter, and the red is the second. I photographed the red anemone just as it was starting to close its petals for the night.

08 November - Garden photographs

Here are three photographs I took on the same afternoon in November, 2008.

The white and pink cleomes were over four feet tall, but are now
closer to five. They continue to bloom despite it being nearly winter now.

The hollyhock is against a fence that only gets partial sun in the fall and winter. It is the oldest and probably the happiest of all the hollyhocks. The long stock next to the flower in bloom is close to ten feet tall.

And the columbine surprised us all when it went into bloom around Halloween. It still looks great as we approach the middle of December, 2008.