Christmas Green

Christmas-y weather is finally here. After a month of wildly seesawing temperatures, we seem to be in a pattern of below-freezing temps at night. This week, anyway. On Saturday, we finished putting the big containers into the garage for the winter, earlier than expected, but there's snow in the forecast, so we figured we'd better do it while we can before the pots freeze up. I hated to see the pansies go, since they were so late going in, with the crazy heat in September. The urns are now stuffed with cut greens, local and Oregon-grown. Made me realize how much I miss white pines, which are planted here, but really struggle. The old trees seem to be ok in many older landscapes, but the new ones installed by builders appear to survive maybe 5-10 years, then bite the dust.
I went shopping for greens for a client Friday, and found a nice selection at Burger Farm in Newtown and at Hyde Park Floral, just around the corner. In addition to mixed bunches, Hyde Park had beautiful red-twig dogwood stems, white pine, nice bunches of boxwood, and these stunning huge cones, and I couldn't resist getting one. There were enough trimmings left over for a big and a tiny vase indoors. If I change the water frequently, I can just replenish the red carnations and white mums occasionally. And Kroger had fabulous winterberry stems -- pricy, but a "bunch" (of 2 whole stems) was enough for knockout color in my big green McCoy vase.

Visit The Heirloom Gardener to see more ideas for winter pots -- already covered in snow. Our rain Sunday was snow in the upper Midwest and the Northeast.