Plumage

Hello, winter landscape. I'm getting to be a bit tired of trees with no leaves....dark, grey days.....lifeless looking grass.


If you're a gardener, then you probably appreciate plants that offer some winter interest. One of the most common is sedum, mainly the upright varieties, like 'Autumn Joy.' I have some of this in my yard. Here is a pic and you might recall having seen this around....

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Another popular winter interest plant is ornamental grass. Many people leave the seedheads on the plant for the winter, since they are pretty. Here are some in my yard.

This one is called maidengrass...probably one of the most common that you would see here in the Midwest. I like this plant a lot throughout the growing season. This particular plant is a bit wonky....it was moved from a not-so-desirable spot in the yard, where it got sun only in the morning. The backside of the plant got no sun. The builders put it there. God knows why they put things where they do.

Maidengrass becomes the bane of my existence this time of year. As you go through the winter, it tends to "weep" its blades and they blow all over the yard. Seeing as it is cold outside, I don't much like to go outside and pick them up. Ugh.

This is a variegated variety of maidengrass that is planted to hide our electrical boxes. I did not pick this one out--our empty nest neighbors bought it and my husband and I did the manual labor of planting. The plumes on this one are a bit sparse, but this plant looks great in the summer.

This last one is my favorite...it is a type of switchgrass, I believe (again, I did not pick it out or pay for it, but my back did). It is green with a reddish tinge in the summer, but the seedheads are really pretty.

I like to cut those and put them around the inside of the house during the winter. As for the dead stalks, they have to be cut back for the new growth to come in. Another month or so and we'll be doing just that.

Means spring is not too far off.