The Wonderment of Mother Nature

It's 29 degrees outside this morning and as I walked out the door bundled in my coat to take my dachshunds out for the morning I saw a section of my azaleas dripping with icicles. Last year there was an early spring cold snap that took the joy from my blooming landscape. I lost all the baby figs on my fig tree and all my blooming daffodils died immediately. This year I tried to prepare for the cold snap in spring. We covered the rose bushes and I tried to protect the hydrangea.
As you can see in the photo the stickly bush in the distance was my hydrangea over the summer because of the spring cold snap that took its toll.

I don't think that the first cold dip did any damage but I have a feeling this one did. Yesterday there was snow blowing in all day, and we had a nice dusting on the ground. And the temperature dropped from 50 degrees to 30 degrees within 30 minutes and has stayed in the 20's and 30's. I can only hope that some of my tender landscape and the ice laying on the azaleas is not the death of my spring blooms.

There is one thing about icicles, they are beautiful. I couldn't help myself and had to snap a few photos. Just as my daughter ran out doors yesterday to scoop up what dusting of snow she could gather in her small hands and form a snow ball that immediately went into a baggy and laid so gently into the freezer for safe keeping. I too, ran outdoors this morning with my camera to capture the beauty of the icicles dangling so magically off the leaves and stems of my shrub.

I still haven't figured out mother nature and how to protect my landscape from these early Georgia spring freezes. I think that I get one step ahead of the cold and then I am once again trying to figure out how to save what I can in the aftermath. I just hope that I have figs this year. We didn't get one fig last year after the last spring freeze took them all. I hope that eventually I will figure out the weather pattern of the zone that I live in and will be able to keep one step ahead of Georgia's spring freezes. For now, I will worry not about what lies ahead for my spring landscape and just take the time to revel in the beauty of nature and how the beautiful icicles made my day.

MOTHER NATURE - Nature, the gentlest mother
BY
Emily Dickinson

Nature, the gentlest mother,
Impatient of no child,
The feeblest or the waywardest, --
Her admonition mild

In forest and the hill
By traveller is heard,
Restraining rampant squirrel
Or too impetuous bird.

How fair her conversation,
A summer afternoon, --
Her household, her assembly;
And when the sun goes down

Her voice among the aisles
Incites the timid prayer
Of the minutest cricket,
The most unworthy flower.

When all the children sleep
She turns as long away
As will suffice to light her lamps;
Then, bending from the sky

With infinite affection
And infiniter care,
Her golden finger on her lip,
Wills silence everywhere.