2010 in pictures: slideshow of an extreme year

CALL IT THE YEAR OF EXTREMES: An extra-early spring, an extra-dry summer, an extra-wet fall (or was that just the way it felt by contrast, since summer had been so rainless?). And lots of shoveling at both ends as one winter faded, and another eventually arrived. Want to wander through a photographic recollection of 2010 in the garden, good times and bad?
Click on the first thumbnail to start the show, then toggle from slide to slide with the arrow keys on your computer, or by clicking the arrow next to each caption, which tells the story of the year gone by. Enjoy.

: 2010 was a year of extremes, or so it felt to me. Seems like the year started and ended in similar fashion: with a lot of shoveling. This was the front walk in February.

: What’s gardening without losses? There were plenty. I lost a favorite conifer, the lacebark pine or Pinus bungeana, to one of the storms.

: The pine had been weakened by a yellow-bellied sapsucker, who made gridlike rows of holes on a portion of the trunk and could not be dissuaded. The storm was the final blow.

: Formerly wild Jack began coming in from his longtime house in a cabin out back during the days to sit with me in “my” house more than ever, while I worked. That’s him banging on the window nearest my chair, just in case I didn’t see him.

: With Jack’s help, I debuted a new look for A Way to Garden early in 2010.

: We also collaborated on germination tests of old seed, which are always one of the first tasks of late winter and early spring.

: With help from above, the first Eranthis hyemalis (winter aconite) debuted itself on March 12, a little early.

: Around the time the Eranthis is in full force, various Helleborus orientalis hybrids start to do their thing.

: The oddest flower among them last year, a chance hybrid between two older plants.

: The original plants from a decade ago are either yellow or “black,” with many dozens of flowers apiece.

: Some of the “black” ones.

: The first week of April, the winter-hazel or Corylopsis spicata (now more than 20 years old and about that many feet across) put on its most spectacular bloom in all our years together.

: Another view of its twigs and blossoms, forced open extra-early by a heatwave.

: The yellow shrubs in the distance are spicebush (Lindera benzoin) at the right, and the Corylopsis just left of center, in the awakening garden by the front path. Whoosh!

: I added a new gold-leaf variety of Corylopsis spicata to the garden in 2010. What foliage!

: Peering through the trunk of a willow at the oldest of the raised vegetable beds in early April.

: From up on the hillside later than week, just shy of mid-April, and the late daffodils are already blowing by in the heat.

: Full bloom on the crabapples followed maybe 10 days later, late April, and lasted only moments. Whoosh again. I hate a hot spring.

: This particular crabapple dropped dead shortly after blooming. RIP. I’d had it a decade or more; who knows what did it in; my autopsy guess was girdling of the lower trunk by rodents in the winter.

: The grass greened up and started growing earlier than any year since I’ve gardened here.

: I mowed in mid-April — weeks before my typical rounds with the machine begin — and was still mowing well into November. Ugh.

: Even though the growing season was very dry, the snakes of various kinds were in profusion, and never shy.

: The two garden pools are among my favorite features, full of frogs, creating sound when the water’s running, and reflecting light. Those poles are my low-tech heron-proofing device, by the way. Can’t have birds eating my frogs, can I?

: The littlest among the frogs was out and about during the unseasonably early springlike weather far earlier — and thought the heron-proofing bamboo poles were a railing for his convenience and comfort.

: The adult males don’t color up to their mating hue until the weather warms in May and June. This guy had the flashiest outfit of 2010.

: 2010 was my first year with Hyacinthoides hispanica, Spanish bluebells. This one is ‘Excelsior.’

: It was my first year with a new, streamlined seed-starting rig, too, that a neighbor made for me.

: And a new set of raised beds, started the previous fall, were waiting to be filled with compost and soil when the snow melted.

: Oops…because of the impossible grade changes where the new beds were erected, the lowest one needed some extra wood at one end.

: Small engineering challenges notwithstanding, the potatoes grew lustily, and so did peas and other crops.

: Another addition: dining chairs, seen here at garden-tour time about May 21. Never had any chairs for dining outdoors. (Confession: By season’s end, I’d sat in them exactly twice. Old dog, no new tricks here for me.)

: In May, the funny old rhubarb plant always has people asking “what’s that plant with the big leaves?”

: Now this plant with the big leaves is a little less commonplace (though more so every year). I’ve been growing Astilboides tabularis from divisions from a botanical garden I got about 20 years ago, and have divided it many times. Nonetheless, the parent plant is pretty big.

: Peas were early by perhaps two weeks, like everything else, with a full crop the first days of June. Wacky.

: Now back to the topic of sitting down…I do sit a lot, to write, and this is where. So looking out the window from indoors is a big part of how I experience the garden.

: When I am outside, I am crawling around working; I only see the garden from inside. So to make a garden, start by going indoors and looking out the window to see where to plant what.

: And the view (in May, with honeysuckle and rhododendron blooming two weeks early) out from the little window over the mudroom sink.

: Finally, so much early heat catches up with things like violas and pansies (but don’t they make the most colorful deadheads?).

: There were peonies for about 5 minutes in the last week of May.

: In late June, the breadseed poppies and a matching spider stole the show.

: By then we were watering nonstop, dragging hoses and sprinklers (including this one set on top of a flea-market metal stool I use to position the spray), but it was never enough.

: Besides thirsty plants, we had thirsty animals, who stayed close to the house (where there was water in the frogponds and fruit to eat).

: There were many fewer Japanese beetles than in a “normal” summer, because their eggs and grubs don’t do well in dry turf. One of the only nice things about last year’s weather.

: Uneven watering stresses many fruiting plants, including tomatoes, which get blossom end rot. I had some damaged fruit on each plant, but nothing catastrophic.

: When someone’s outside to be his chaperone, such as when I am gardening, Jack is happy to come sit and observe, more like a dog than a cat in his behavior. He is not permitted unsupervised daytime wanderings, however; not fair to birds.

: Like the farmers working the fields across from me, I worried about getting any harvests in such a dry, hot season.

: But the garlic was big and plentiful…

: …and so were the onions (a portion of the crop, the smaller ones, in a basket after curing).

: I feared no fall color, either, because of the lack of rain and the prolonged heat…but (as you can see in the distance, way past the panicle hydrangas) the trees all colored up beautifully, if a bit earlier than normal.

: I think my Clematis tangutica had its showiest year of flowers and then seedheads (shown) ever.

: I really pushed it (as always) with the houseplants, covering them a few nights with sheets and such, but in mid-October indoors they came, into the mudroom (shown), living and dining and bed and bathrooms. Everywhere!

: Viburnum ‘Michael Dodge’ put on a heavy show of is unusual yellow fruit.

: Speaking of yellow…it was the dominant color of the fall garden, and nothing pleased me more during its decline that a potted Japanese maple (background)…

: …whose delicate leaves lit up before descending.

: Cannot get enough of that moment; puddles of color spilling over the rims of pots, onto the ground.

: I brought some in to show Jack, who was curled up in one of the many towel-lined “pods” he’d acquired this year in “my” house. No reaction.

: November also means the long light as the patterns change and the days grow short but dramatic. The century-old apples paint the ground with light and dark.

: There were odd heatspells in late fall, and one of the yellow magnolias started to show color in its buds, thinking it was spring already. I don’t expect they will last through the winter, but will probably just frost off meanwhile. Like I said…always some losses.

: More gold: the spicebush, Lindera benzoin, among the earliest to awaken and last to go to sleep.

: And Hakonechloa ‘All Gold,’ with more staying power than most any other perennial. Brilliant May into early winter, I swear.

: Another solid-gold fall shrub: the giant old Aesculus parvifloras here, or bottlebrush buckeye.

: And then, eventually, it all goes quiet…you know the drill…and one morning you wake up with snow over the first-floor windowsills….

: …and the big Indonesian Buddha out back almost completely invisible…

: …and that same damn path needing shoveling out from under another 2 feet of snow, a bookend to the 2 feet early on in this year of extremes. What will 2011 bring?