Encased

In the real dark night of the soul, it is always March 5th,
day after day...
(my apologies to F. Scott Fitzgerald)

These baptisia seedpods look much the way I feel right now mentally:
Encased, suspended, immobile.

But don't they look cool? Sights like these always make me thankful that I am not in a hurry to clean up my garden in the fall. If I did more than just the cleanup necessary for hygiene reasons (rose and tomato foliage, etc.) then this area of the garden would be a blank white void today. Instead, I get to enjoy iced branches and seedpods. And grasses.

Here is carex buchanii sporting a new winter 'do. Can't you just see plant hybridizers trying to come up with a grass that looks like it has dreadlocks ("Coolio" hair grass doesn't count, in spite of its name) for use in containers and modern gardens?

I admit, I'd be tempted to buy it.
I could never carry them off, but I think that dreads are beautiful on many people. Why not in the garden?

I'd been planning to give the Japanese maple (above) a judicious pruning in the spring. Maybe Ma Nature is getting a head start... if she is, I hope I agree with her aesthetics.

The ice on the neighbor's beech tree is thicker than the coating on my Japanese maple. I'm always fascinated by the thick buds on the beech... they have such presence that you notice them from afar. Like drop earrings worn against a bare neck, with your hair in an updo. Elegant drama.

Does anyone else see ice-coated branches and feel tempted to brush up against them just to see whether they shatter?

I never would do it, of course, but I'm always tempted. And I know that ice can be destructive but somehow I fail to feel dismayed when I see it in my yard.

Must be something about the way it turns everything around me into a crystalline wonderland, and sets shafts of sunlight ablaze with a million twinkles.

Ice can't be all bad if it brings some beauty into your world during what has felt like the. absolute. longest. winter. ever. Right?