Welcome to Dan & Rita's Garden on Christmas eve morning!
December 24, 1999

It's so great to have you here!!
It's great to have new snow on the day before Christmas!!!
I hope you brought some snow boots so we can see what the garden looks like in winter.
Don't worry if you didn't, I'm sure we have some in the garage you can use. One of the neat things about having a pond and garden is sharing it with friends. I'm so glad you stopped by so we can share our garden with YOU!
Come on, let's take a stroll.....

It's entirely up to you but you might find it more fun to visit our garden in the summer of 1999
or our garden in the summer of 2000
and then come back here to see it snow-covered. On the other hand, you're already here and the page is probably about loaded so let's go!

Front door with snow! We might as well start out front. It's not really part of the "new garden stuff" but it just looks so darn good with the snow on it, I couldn't resist showing it to you.

Anyone who drives by gets to see this view but we only take our friends around back, lets keep moving before our toes get too cold!

Brick walk snow covered! Let's start the tour in pretty much the same place as we did last summer. It'll be fun to see the difference!

There is a curving brick walk under there somewhere. The arbor looked a lot more inviting when it was covered with blooming morning glory!

Notice the "bare little tree" in front of the arbor.
Let's take a closer look.

Harry Lauder's Walking Stick This "tree" was planted right in front of the angel bench for just one reason.

It is just so neat looking in the winter!
The rest of the garden has pretty much "lost it" until Spring but this little tree will catch your eye when all else is drab and boring.

Corylus Avellana "Contorta"
"Harry Lauder's Walking Stick"

What a neat name, what a neat little tree!! It's simply a hazel nut tree with some sort of genetic defect. It seems that the gene that lets it grow straight branches is missing.

Let me tell you this tree has NADA, ZIP, ZILCH, ZERO straight branches!!

Here's another view

Arbor, anglebench and
harry lauder It's the kind of thing you'd expect to see growing around the yard and grounds of some haunted house somewhere.
Rita calls it "the ugly tree" but I like it a lot!!
She admits it looks kind of neat in the winter with the leaves off.

Check it out at a nursery near you.

Hand pump in the snow! I almost forgot to have you look at the hand pump. Folks who took the summer garden tour will remember it sits right at the bottom of our deck steps and right at the top of the brick walk leading to the garage.

In summer it's got a washtub and it "pumps" water into the tub via a little pond pump.

There's 2 kinds of mint and some English thyme here too. I sure hope they come back next year.

There's mint and Jacob's ladder and thyme here, really... no kidding.... would I lie to you??

Bluebird house with snowcap This is one of 2 bluebird houses in our back yard. It sure looks cold and lonesome sitting back here by it's self!

I sure hope we get some bluebirds this spring. Our neighbors had them last summer so we are keeping our fingers crossed.

If you want to build a birdhouse or two for your garden you can visit
http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/resource/tools/ndblinds/ndblinds.html#contents
to download plans for several types.

What's the matter, you can't remember that long address?? OK, here's a link you can take but be sure and come back to finish the tour!! Birdhouse plans. You can also drop by the newsgroup rec.birds and find folks who can tell you everything you want to know about backyard birding.

This is a simple and fun winter project. Build one for yourself!!

Pool and tall grass with snow If we go back near the walking stick and then step around our little above ground pool, we can see the fishpond area.

I tried to take this picture from the same spot as one that's on the garden page. You can look there and see the difference for yourself.

Tall grass in the snow This is just one more reason to have lots of tall grass in your garden.
It looks neat in the winter too.

Need some more reasons to have tall or "ornamental grass"??
How 'bout it's relatively cheap.
It's easy to grow and low maintenance.
It's easy to propagate so you can impress your friends with lots of clumps.
It's low maintenance.
You can give some away.
It's low maintenance.
It just looks good.
It's low maintenance.

How do you propagate tall grass you ask??
Wait till spring if possible but anytime would probably work. I've divided it in hot summer but ya gotta keep it watered if you do that. Simply dig around the root ball on one or more sides. Get your AXE. You heard me, get your AXE and chop off part of the root ball. Lift it out of the hole and move it to someplace else. Stick it back in the ground "at the depth it was growing before" and water it well.

If the grass clump is very small you may be able to cut it with a sharp spade but it really is much easier to chop it with an axe.
Did I mention that it's low maintenance??

You get the idea, I want more tall grass!!

There IS a pond in this picture! This is the very same view as on the garden page where I said, "sit by the pond and listen to the waterfall."
There IS a pond in this picture!! If you look closely in the lower right corner you will see a snow igloo. Under that mound is a pond covered with leaf netting (made out of black wedding veil material from Wal-Mart).

As I stood here, I could still hear the waterfall running under the snow cover!

Dan, dreaming of warm weather! I sat here and after a few minutes the little chickadees and nuthatches came back and ate at the feeder just 5 or 6 feet away from me.

Some folks sit around their feeders long enough to feed the birds from their hands.

It's a little too cold out here for me to wait that long.

IS IT SPRING YET????????

Oh, yeah, check out the gen-u-ine John Deer Yellow paint on that swing!!

Deck and wreath in the snow

It's cold out here! Let's head on up to the deck and "slide" in the back door and get warmed up.

I know Rita has hot coffee and hot chocolate ready.
There are "snicker doodles" cookies in the oven and some apple-cinnamon candles burning. If you close your eyes you can almost smell 'em from here.

I bet there's Christmas music on the stereo too.

Remember, it's always the day before Christmas on this page!!
If you got this far down the page, you are my kind of folks!!! Drop me a line if you feel like it!!! Just first name and city, state, (country?). Naturally I'd love to hear your comments about my pond and garden page but there's NO pressure here. Just a line to say "I saw your pond and garden page" would be fine.

"I feel closest to God when I'm sitting in my His garden".

I welcome email from my friends! You are invited to click the mail-dove to send me a message OR you may hand type my address into your message.
My address is "dan at ky-dan dot com". It looks funny when written out this way but it should fool those darn spammer robots that visit web sites gathering email addresses.

Mail Dove



pointing handUp to the top of this page
This way Pointing Hand to the Pond page!
pointing hand Let's visit the garden in Summer!
Pointing HandBack to Dan's Garage
Shoveled the walk and filled the birdfeeders (page first online) January 3, 2000
Touched up a few of the photos December 2000.