Time to Welcome Winter's Bones

As the Winter Solstice kicked in at 12:30 a.m. Eastern time on  December 22, I turned the corner in the garden, heading toward spring. With the Solstice comes more sunlight with each new day, barely perceptible. Nevertheless, I know it's there; I feel it.

But, first, let us praise winter's bones.

To be sure, this season is brutally frank, when much of my garden strips naked, revealing its structure, unhidden by lush greenery or eye-catching blooms.

At the same time, the garden expands visually as many of the ferns, hostas, other perennials and the houseplants that I re-purposed for the summer die back and the leafless trees and shrubs take up less space.

The resulting winter starkness accentuates the beauty of bark – in my garden and in nature's larger garden; my attention always snaps to as I drive past sycamores clad in camouflage. Or shaggy river birches. Or colonies of white birches, ghostly contrasts among trees dressed in gray. Much like persistent copper-colored leaves on beeches standing out in a forest of naked trees.

My cinnamon-bark maple provides bark texture that beckons. As does heptacodium, known as the “crape myrtle of the North.” Both invite touching that rewards: Peeling bark, thin, crinkly, is revealing; it connects me with the trees. Pines, looking fresh and green, seem ancient as well, their bark resembling some long-gone scaly creature.

I am fortunate to look out my writing-room window at a tall, three-trunk white birch. Even when snow falls, this tree stands out. Stand-outs also are the lobster-colored coral-bark maple, winterberry, a bird magnet, the sculpted forms of the bare sumacs.

All this wonder gets me through long winters and short days, bridging the distance to spring.

Happy Solstice!

Lee May, author and retired journalist, writes at LeeMaysGardeningLife.com