Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day - January 15

In the fall, I remove all annuals and cut down all the perennials in my yard. This makes for an easy start in the spring because there is little or no clean up to be done. The problem is that then there's nothing sticking out of the snow to be photographed for Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day. So, off I went to the Green Bay Botanical Garden. Technically, it is my garden because I'm a member.

This bronze sculpture, Serenade, is in the Upper Rose Garden. It was a gift to the garden from the children of Marguerite and George Kress, as a tribute to their parents. Dee Clements was the sculptor. Morning Light Chinese Silver Grass swaying in the background.

In the summer, the Rose Garden is filled with colorful blooming hardy shrubs and hybrid tea roses, but on this January day rose hips provided the only color. Rose hips are the fruit of the rose plant and according to Wikipedia, rose hips are used for herbal tea, jam, jelly, syrup, beverages, pies, bread and marmalade. They are also high in Vitamin C.

Adam's Needle Yucca looks almost as attractive to me poking out of the snow as it does in the summer when it has a tall flower spike at the center of the plant that last for several weeks.

I think this particular grass is Karl Foerster feather reed grass. The foliage is dark green during the spring, summer and early fall and the flowers are pinkish in color. By late fall and into the winter, both are the color of wheat.

Do you know those beautiful Pinky-Winky hydrangeas that bloom in the early summer with cone-shaped white flowers that then turn to a pink color in August? This is how they look in January in zone 4.

This is the Nodding Wild Onion, a popular Midwestern prairie plant. In the summer it produces pale lavender flowers on a single leafless stalk and attracts honeybees.

This colorful frog sitting out in the snow made me smile. There is a special children's garden that includes a frog pond, but that's not where I found this one. It was sitting near one of the buildings where the classrooms are located.

As always, Carol at May Dreams Gardens, is our most wonderful hostess for Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day and I thank her for doing so. Please do go to her most delightful and informative blog and see how you, too, can join in on the 15th of every month.

I used the new updated editor for this post and it felt awkward and unfamiliar and it seemed to take me forever to complete the post. And I never did figure out what happened to spellcheck.

I'm posting this one day early because tomorrow is my dad's 86th birthday and I'll be busy preparing dinner to take down to him for the celebration. Be looking for me to visit your garden when I get home.