It has been a month since I posted a blog, so I’ll show you double the photos today, but will try to keep the commentary brief. 

The Gulf Coast has had some roller coaster weather over the last four weeks, with five nights of hard freezes in the week before Christmas, then up to almost 80 on January 2, and back down to sub-freezing again. Most days are pleasant, cool, and sunny, but the extremes have been hard on our gardens.

Many shrubs, like the rose in the center of my backyard, are trying to put out new growth, then get nipped back. So I’ll prune it soon.

In the north-facing front yard, there is lots of freezer burn. You see brown camellias and asparagus ferns in the two photos above.

The next two pictures above show the back fence row. It still looked pretty good a month ago, but the elephant ears have now turned to mush and disintegrated. The firespikes have become black as burnt toast.

I’ve started some cleanup in the beds by clearing away the dead ginger foliage.

I had to drastically cut back and weed this space on the south side. A guy is coming to pressure wash our house, so I didn’t want to damage the things I usually keep here.

But lots of bulb foliage is coming up.

The forsythia has been blooming for a couple of weeks.

 This encore azalea hasn’t seemed to mind the fickle freezes.

And because I cover some things on those cold nights, my container garden of salad greens is surviving.

There are always gardening tasks to do, even in the dead of winter. So stay warm, my friends.