The Lazy Berkshire Gardener is definitely slowing down during the holidays. Time to enjoy holiday lights and landscape bones accentuated by snow or frost from inside.
These slower days leave room for snowy walks and enjoyment of indoor plants, like amaryllis, paperwhite narcissus, or cyclamen.
Amaryllis bulbs can be kept from year to year. I let mine grow through last summer outside, but I did not fertilize them. Now they have started to sprout! Sadly, the shoots are not budded stems but leaves. Flower stems may appear, but typically you will see a flower stem first and leaves later. Oh well. Better luck next year. I will fertilize the bulbs and encourage more leafy growth through the summer to get better flower buds for December 2026.
My paperwhites (recently purchased) are budding up nicely—photos of them next week!
Cyclamen are a Eurasian flower from cool hillsides with consistent water over well-drained soil. They make a lovely addition in the winter months when our indoor temperatures hover around 55 to 65 degrees. I think of them as flying hearts. If you choose to have cyclamen in your home, keep them in a cooler room and back from direct sunlight. Direct winter sun will accelerate the bloom period.
For any plant you choose as a gift this holiday season, be sure to include a quick note on the plant’s cultural needs. By giving a living plant, you help your recipient look to the future with positivity. Don’t blow it! Help them keep the new plant alive for a long time with cultural tips for the plant’s future success.
Maybe your gift recipient leaves home for days at a time. Watering a plant might be very low on their to-do list even though they love the look of foliage or interesting flowers. Choose carefully and consider what the gift recipient can handle. Cactus and succulent plants can tolerate dry indoor winter air and weeks of neglect but still have beautiful colors and shapes.
For the gardener on your list who seems to constantly crave something new, look up “Seeds-of-the-Month” clubs. Seed companies offer these packages to generate interest in new seed varieties over the growing season. It is a win-win for adventurous gardeners on your gift list—maybe you?
I may be lazy, but I still compost kitchen waste during the winter—fruit and vegetable scraps, coffee grounds, and eggshells. During these dark days pre-solstice, I try to focus on the small routine tasks and marvel at their effect. We pile the coffee grounds, the apple cores, and the carrot peels daily into a small container by the sink. As we head out for our walk, the compostables head to the compost pile. What’s marvelous is the pile never smells and rarely gets larger. It does not freeze solid as long as we peel away a top layer to bury fresh material every day. The material breaks down with every stir, and by next summer, I will have fresh compost to enrich the soil around perennials and within our vegetable beds.
On our daily walks, I try to focus on the positive (ignoring the cold wind) by studying the subtle colors and textures of tree bark as well as seed heads of wildflowers. We are in the season of structure where the stems and dried flowers show their bones. It is wonderful to notice without the distraction of color, fragrance, or insect noise. These days, I also notice the moss, fungi, and lichen on tree branches and trunks. Lichens are a combination of fungi and algae and do no damage to their host. Lichen typically appears on woody plant parts that are not growing as quickly, but other than that, they do not indicate any problem or disease. When temperatures rise and we have a cold, wet day, the lichen glows.
Elsewhere the ground has frozen solid. I have put out my bird feeders now. I believe the neighborhood bear has found a place to snooze for a few weeks. We use black oil sunflower bird seed primarily in our feeders with some feeders dedicated to hot pepper suet (to discourage the squirrels) and one for dried meal worms. The sunflower seed attracts the most birds. But I love seeing bluebirds, and dried mealworms attract them. Woodpeckers, chickadees, and finches all love the suet. Cardinals visit my squirrel-proof flat feeder of seeds once all the other birds have visited and given the “all’s well” signal. Especially striking right now with the recent snowfall, cardinals are not surprisingly the official state bird of seven states!
However, no other birds stay at the feeders as long as the house finches. These pairs stick close together all season long and happily camp out on a feeder until they get their fill.
One feeding station has a baffle to prevent marauding squirrels, and the other two will close off the seed access if a heavy squirrel tries for a snack. I am not worried about squirrels getting enough food over the winter. Squirrels can find food buried under a foot of snow!
Check your potatoes, apples, garlic, squash, and onions that may be currently in cold storage or a root cellar. In my kitchen, clementines stored too close to onions will ripen too quickly. Bruised produce may begin to rot and affect all the others in the basket. Do not lose your hard-earned winter produce, especially since the sweetness of buttercup and Hubbard squash improves during storage.
When I have the itch to visit my plantings, I like to have another reason for facing the cold and being outside. There is not much maintenance right now, so I try to bring the outdoors inside by arranging fresh-cut greens in a vase. Pieces that fall off the stems are easily gathered into a bowl for a fragrant potpourri in a guest bath or bedroom. A few stems from blue holly, pine, and rhododendron will not hurt the plants. Add in stems of red-twig dogwood and sumac flowers for color and you have a fragrant seasonal arrangement.
Finally, soak up the holidays! Hanukkah begins at sunset on Sunday, December 14. Chag Sameach!
I call myself the Lazy Berkshire Gardener because I don’t want to work too hard in my gardens. I want to enjoy them. I find it easier to observe my landscape and let the compost happen, the water pool up, or daisies to self-sow. I look for ways to do the minimum task for the biggest impact. For example, mulching is better than spraying and much better than weeding all season. I look for beautiful, low-maintenance plants that thrive in or at least tolerate my garden conditions. Plus, I am willing to live with the consequences if I miss something.
