This week in the garden - #46

If my garden were a hawk, this week it would look like this:

Bedraggled. Disheveled. Wet through to the skin. Waiting for the sun to come out and dry him off.

We've had just over four inches of rain this week. Not unwelcome rain, to be sure. After our last two plus years of drought, I'm certainly not here to complain about four inches of rain in January. But I have to admit that it has left the garden looking pretty sad.

I've yet to really get started on winter cleanup. All the plants and limbs killed by the few frosts that we've had are still present in the garden in all their brown mushy glory. Soon, weather permitting, I really must get started on the task. Next week, perhaps.

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In last Friday's TWITG entry, I promised you a "point of view" project this year. Well, the sun finally came out today and I went outside with my camera to fulfill my promise - at least the beginning of it.

I debated about where to point my camera for a POV, but, at length, I decided to stand in front of my garden shed and look back down the garden path toward the house and my neighbor's yard. This gives a fairly panoramic view of a good slice of the backyard and it is a view which should change dramatically as the months go by. Right now, it must be admitted, it's a pretty desolate view. Here it is - the unexpurgated, unedited, un-retouched image of part of my backyard.

I plan to take pictures from this angle every month on the 11th of the month to show you how this area changes over time. By February, I hope it will be a littler neater and a little more colorful.

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This was another week when I didn't really get any real gardening done, but I did manage to get some birding done. Yesterday, we spent the day at Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge, where I took the picture of the wet hawk that you see at the top of the page. I took a lot of other pictures, too. You can see some of them at my other blog, Backyard Birder.