The Flower Garden in January 2016

I have to admit that I find dried flowers, pods and cones fascinating. They are just as interesting as flowers in full bloom, just in a different way. During the winter, I would bundle up and trek out to see what was happening in the garden.

The paper-like flowers of dried hydrangeas look like they could blow away with the slightest breeze...and sometimes they do.

I had Japanese Irises for years before I noticed the dried pods. Now they are probably my favorite pod in the garden. 

The pods hold onto snow as if they are saving it up for a snowball fight. 

Dried coneflowers can look very different depending on if they have lost all of their needle-like bits or not. Here they are without them.

Here they are with them, capped in snow.

Dried aster flowers in the flower garden.

And dried aster flowers in a pot on the front porch, topped with snow.

There is something sad, yet beautiful, in finding bits of dried plants here and there in the yard in winter.

As mentioned in my previous post, there was some snow in January, although not as much as in some previous years.

And then there was this...

Had to make sure to take care of my bird friends during the winter. People find this surprising, but the squirrels never try to climb to my feeders. They hang out under them and wait for the birds to drop seeds. I also make sure to leave them a few on the ground just to keep them happy.