Dallas is in the midst of a typically un-typical winter… 75 and sunny two days ago… high of 38 today. There’s a saying in Texas, “Don’t like the weather? Wait a minute, it’ll change.”
Thankfully, though, we haven’t really been the victim of Old Man Winter that some of the country has been. But there is a bright side that some never notice (probably because they are to too busy digging their cars out after the snow plow buries them)… it is the wonderfully architectural quality that gardens take on when blanketed in snow. Rather than focusing on the rich riot of colors that flowers and foliage present, we are able to see the bones and textural qualities of the garden.
What a severe yet master artist old winter is.... No longer the canvas and the pigments, but the marble and the chisel. ~John Burroughs, "The Snow-Walkers," 1866
Nature looks dead in winter because her life is gathered into her heart. She withers the plant down to the root that she may grow it up again fairer and stronger. She calls her family together within her inmost home to prepare them for being scattered abroad upon the face of the earth. ~Hugh Macmillan, "Rejuvenescence," The Ministry of Nature, 1871
It is the life of the crystal, the architect of the flake, the fire of the frost, the soul of the sunbeam. This crisp winter air is full of it. ~John Burroughs, "Winter Sunshine"
I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape — the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show. ~Andrew Wyeth
Of winter's lifeless world each tree now seems a perfect part; yet each one holds summer's secret deep down within its heart" ~Charles G. Stater
Winter came down to our home one night Quitely pirouetting in on silvery-toed slippers of snow, And we, we were children once again. ~Bill Morgan, Jr.
This garden belongs to our dear friends and clients and is here in Dallas. My husband, Cole, and his team at Smith Ekblad and Associates were the architects, my team did the interiors, and Lambert Landscape Company designed the extraordinary Italian influenced gardens. It’s so beautiful to see it robed in white.
Love,
Sherry