Favorite photos of 2010

I thought I'd finish off the year with a look at some of my favorite photos from 2010. Since I took a lot of photos this past year -- over 6000! -- I knew I'd need some rules when choosing or else I'd end up with 100 photos in this post. So I made two rules: 1) the photo must be related to the garden  2) I had to choose exactly two photos from each month.

It was pretty difficult to find two good photos from January and February (before I started this blog), and it was even harder to pick only two images from May, June, July and a couple of other months, but I stuck to it. Most of these photos have appeared in the blog, but some may have not.

Edit: I missed a month and had some mislabeled -- fixed now.

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Bamboo likes some snow, but not too much

I've said it before that bamboo in the snow is extra-beautiful. The problem comes when you get too much snow, or the wrong kind of snow. Heavy snow that sticks to the bamboo and weighs it down, bending it over -- that's the wrong kind of snow.

It's not so pretty then, and is actually a bit distressing the first time it happens.

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Snow make pretty

Like much of the country, we got some snow here in St. Louis this past weekend, on Christmas Eve actually. Although we didn't get the city-closing totals that the East Coast did, we got a decent 4 inches, which is a nice amount. It covers everything and makes things look completely different, sort of sugar-coated.

It also does some unexpected things, like revealing where the ground is warmer.

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Hawk!

For the past couple of days this hawk has been visiting my yard. I'm pretty sure it's a red-shouldered hawk, unless there is another hawk species that looks very similar.

Perhaps all of the grasses and bamboos that are currently covered in snow make my garden appear to be the perfect winter hunting location, with lots of hiding spots for rabbits and other delicious morsels for a ravenous raptor.

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A pretty calm year: 2009

As I reviewed the photos I took from 2009 (the last year before I started this blog), I realized that it was a pretty calm year in the garden. No construction projects, no trees to plant, no new planting beds to prepare (well, just one). Just a nice year of watching things get larger.

The year started out with one of the favorite photos of bamboo I've taken to date. This is the bamboo I put in the raised bed just four months or so earlier.

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A storm and more bamboo: 2008 part 2

In the history of my yard's transformation into a garden, I stopped at late summer 2008, hinting about a storm. On September 14, the storm that was the remnants of Hurricane Ike moved over St. Louis and hit my garden pretty hard.

I'll start today by taking a look at what exactly happened.

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Bamboo in snow: Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve in St. Louis and it started to snow. As I've said before, I think snow and bamboo go great together, so I've snapped a few photos.

If you celebrate Christmas, I wish you a happy and safe holiday!

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Let's add some bamboo: 2008

After the projects of 2006 that gave my garden "purpose" and the excitement of 2007 in buying lots of new plants to fill in around the patio, the spring of 2008 was eagerly awaited. I bought more plants and did a few little projects that I barely documented with photos. But if I had to summarize 2008 with a single word, it would be "bamboo".

Even though I had bought a couple of small clumping bamboos in 2006, for some reason I awoke from my winter gardening slumber this year and thought "I'll give big bamboo a try".

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A year of not building anything: 2007

After the huge projects of 2006, 2007 was relatively quiet. I didn't need to excavate any giant holes, move any rocks or build any structures. There was some digging involved though, because I planted a few more trees and prepared a few new planting beds.

This is one of the trees that was planted in the front yard. It's 'Shaina' Japanese Maple, and I really love this tree -- it made such a bold statement here between the house and the driveway.

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